Description

TQ 2683 NE ORDNANCE HILL, NW8
(south-west side)
1900/3/10116 Riding School, St John's Wood
Barracks

II

Riding school at Royal Artillery barracks. 1823-24, signed by Major B Tylden, RE. Painted brick with slate hipped roof. Classical style. Rectangular plan with entrance porch at E end.
EXTERIOR: single storey; 6-window range. A regular hall with impost band and brick eaves corice, the pedimented porch has a round-arched recess containing a segmental-arched doorway and a lunette over the impost band, and a square timber clock tower with louvred front and weather vane on top. The end of the riding school has a segmental-arched doorway to the side of the porch; the sides have an arcade of arched recesses as the porch, containing large small-paned metal-framed lights divided into three by a round-arched mullion.
INTERIOR: has battered sides to the lower wall to prevent horses becoming trapped, and a wide timber queen post roof.
HISTORY: riding schools were a central part of cavalry barracks for training and practising manoeuvres. St John's Wood was one of the few barracks built during the post-Waterloo period, to improve security in the capital, and is linked in with Nash's Metropolitan Improvements. The riding school is the only major remaining part of the original barracks. Only two much smaller examples survive that are earlier, at Dorchester and Exeter, the St John's Wood school is comparable with the large riding school built at the same time as part of the Brighton Pavilion, a large and carefully composed example of this specialised type.
(Plans of site and plans and elevations of 'riding house': 1825-: PRO, W078/1338).

Listing NGR: TQ2673183543

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q26656386

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.

Recommended Books

• 
  Department for Communities Listed Historic Buildings of Northern Ireland: Information Guide for the 2nd Survey of Historic Buildings
• 
  Listed Buildings: The Law and Practice of History Buildings, Ancient Monuments and Conservation Areas
• 
  Kent: North East and East (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  For the Record
• 
  Herefordshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Building Small Projects (New Best of Fine Woodworking)