The Defensible Barracks

The Defensible Barracks

Built between 1841 and 1846 to house officers and men of the Royal Marines and to provide some landward defence for the Royal Dockyard, this is a square-plan defensible barracks of considerable architectural and historical importance.

The building is constructed of coursed rubble stone with ashlar dressings, topped with hipped slate roofs and red brick chimneys. The centre of the platform forms a 140-foot (42.67-metre) square parade ground enclosed by barrack blocks. Entry is gained through a projecting gatehouse on the north side.

The gatehouse is the focal point of the composition, with a pedimented ashlar front containing five musketry loopholes set above a sill band and a moulded cambered arched gateway bearing the datestone 'VE 1844'. Two flanking loopholes flank the gateway, while the wall breaks back on each side with additional loopholes at each floor level. Winches for the former sliding drawbridge remain in the rooms flanking the entry. The flank walls of the gatehouse are loopholed on both floors and return to the north side of the barracks.

The parade ground is enclosed by four two-storey ranges with basements. Chamfered corners allow access passageways leading to the bastions through tall cambered archways with double wooden doors. The external elevations were originally pierced with 419 ashlar square musketry loops arranged in groups across two floors (though some have since been replaced with sash windows). Central projecting square blocks project from the west, east and south sides, each carrying sash windows to the front and loopholes to the sides; the east block carries an iron water tank. The chamfered corners feature steps down to basement stores on each side of the gateways, with four loopholes at ground floor and eleven at first floor level.

The north external wall includes contemporary brick additions (marked on the 1862 plan): to the west of the gatehouse is a structure with a flat concrete roof, and to the east is a former detention room and cell block with a hipped slate roof. A small fire-engine shed stands to the east. Later nineteenth-century additions on the south wall include a five-bay lean-to timber gun shed, a gabled billiard room, and a latrine. The west wall formerly carried a lean-to timber 'skidding shed'.

The courtyard elevations present a fine Georgian-style square with pedimented centrepieces on three sides. All elevations feature 12-pane sash windows set in flush surrounds, a plain band, and parapet. The continuous basement area is crossed by ashlar steps on brick half-arches and protected by cast-iron rails bearing Prince of Wales feathers and VR crests.

The west and east sides are identical in composition (5-3-5 bays with centre doorways). The north side comprises 5-2-1-2-5 bays, with the centre containing the main gateway crowned by a sash window and pediment carrying a clock. Doorways are positioned in the centres of the two five-bay sections. The south side is arranged as 5-9-5 bays with a slightly recessed centre; one doorway is located in each of the outer sections and three in the nine-bay centre section, with alternate doorways having later timber shallow-pedimented porches. All doorways are set in shallow-gabled flush ashlar surrounds.

The east and west ranges contained full-depth barrack rooms with timber floors laid on slotted cast-iron joists and beams. Ashlar centre stairs with iron balustrades rise from basement to first floor. Timber king-post roof trusses support the roofs. Slop bucket recesses are positioned adjacent to the barrack-room doors. The south section of the east range was converted to small hotel rooms around 1985. The west range contains a dumb-waiter set in a partition wall rising from the basement bakery.

The basements of the projecting centre blocks housed cartridge magazines with brick cavity walls. An adjacent lighting passage admits light through a glass-sealed recess, designed to avoid introducing fire into the magazines. The west magazine retains copper-faced shifting lobby doors still bearing a WO Form 949 'Standing Orders for Artillery Magazines'.

The south range contained officers' quarters in the centre, with ante-room and mess to the east. The north range housed the soldiers' mess, bar and tap, and married quarters. The basement rooms reached by the external stairs in the chamfered angles served as stores, laundry, latrines and magazines. The northeast powder magazine within the east curtain comprises two barrel-vaulted chambers entered by a metal-clad door and wooden gate. The outer chamber, divided by a wooden partition, served as a 'filled shell store', while the inner chamber is entered via a fully-equipped 'shifting lobby' and is subdivided into a cartridge store and a larger shell store, the former fitted with timber magazine skidding and a horizontally-sliding issue hatch, and the latter with two issue hatches.

This structure is listed as Grade II* and scheduled as an Ancient Monument (Pe 379).