Description

TQ 7570 SE FRINDSBURY EXTRA HIGH STREET, Upnor
(North side)
1797/15/52
The Barracks, Upnor Castle
14.11.1986

GV I

Barracks, now store and museum. 1717-18, for the Board of Ordnance. Red English bond brick with ridge and gable stacks, and tiled valley roof Double-depth plan, divided into 3 separate sections by spine and central rear transverse walls.
EXTERIOR: 3 storeys and attic; 5-window range. Symmetrical front has a plinth, rusticated brick quoins to a second floor cornice, attic with wooden eaves cornice, parapet and paired, coped gables. Flat-roofed porch with cornice and parapet, steps up to round-arched doorways each side, a small segmental-arched window in the front, and a segmental-arched doorway with panelled double doors; segmental-arched 6/6-pane sashes and smaller second-floor windows, the outer ones paired with a lead downpipe and dated hopper between. Left-hand double basement doors in the plinth. Cornices extend to returns with paired gables, 2 attic sashes to the front gable and 2 oculi to the rear, each with a doorway to the rear. The rear left-hand gable has a weather vane.
INTERIOR: entrance lobby to a dogleg stair with uncut string and plain rail to a first-floor landing with trap door; the rear sections each have dogleg stairs up from the side entrances; collar truss roof with through purlins. Cast-iron C19 fireplaces, and wooden clothes racks in former bedrooms.
HISTORY: accommodated the garrison for Upnor Castle (qv), from 1668 one of the largest powder stores in the country. In the early C19 it housed 2 officers in the front section, and 64 soldiers in the rear. One of the first purpose-built barracks in England, in the style associated with Hawksmoor and the Ordnance Board at this time, and part of a Erne group with the Castle.
(English Heritage Handbook: Saunders A D: Upnor Castle, Kent: London: 1985-: 15).

Listing NGR: TQ7581070502

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q17533079

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

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