Officers' Mess, Proof and Experimental Establishment, Horseshoe Barracks

Details

TQ 98 SW SOUTHEND ON SEA MESS ROAD
(south east side), Shoebury Garrison

5/91 Officers' Mess, Proof and
Experimental Establishment, Horseshoe Barracks
11.2.87

GV II

Coastguard station, now included within officers' mess and accommodation. c1825 coastguard station, library and former dining room 1852, extended to the rear 1861-2, dining room extended and accommodation buildings added 1898. Yellow stock brick, stretcher bond and Portland dressings to 1890s build, with lateral and ridge stacks, and slate hipped roof. PLAN: central double-depth library building and right-hand L-shaped former dining room and dining room extension; single-depth axial plan accommodation. EXTERIOR: single-storey; 1-window coastguard station, incorporated within rear of single storey; 5-window range library with single storey; 3:4-window former dining room, and new dining room to right, and long 2 storey; 17-window accommodation range to left. Central library building has rubbed brick flat arches to tall ground-floor 6/9-pane sashes and first-floor 3/6-pane sashes, with 2 right-hand casements, and in the centre a late C19 glazed porch with plinth, mullion and transom windows and half-glazed C20 double doors to left, and half-glazed doors in entrances to the returns. To the right the former dining room is set back, with a moulded pediment gable containing a keyed lunette, with tall, rubbed brick segmental-arched 12/12-pane sashes; 3-window right-hand return has a blind window to the front and a lateral stack. Long right-hand dining room with a tall left-hand 12/12-pane sash, and 1 large and 2 narrower sashes to right of centre with projecting exterior chimneys either side; right-hand return has a 4-light canted bay with hipped roof. To the rear decorative cast-iron glazed porch and former billiard room, now kitchen. Left-hand 1898 accommodation a long symmetrical range with ashlar cill bands and dentil, 2-window ends set forward, and projecting entrance bays 4 from each end with semi-circular gables. Segmental-arched doorways with 4-pane overlights, margin lights and double 4-panel doors, beneath 3-light mullion and transom first-floor windows; rubbed brick heads to ground-floor segmental-arched and first-floor flat-arched horned plate-glass sashes. INTERIOR: former dining room has trusses with arch-braced canted ties and trefoil-headed spandrel panels, and oak half panelling with fluted Corinthian pilasters to fireplaces; dining room has half-glazed dado doors under broken pediments, 3 fireplaces, dado rail and panelled dado, and plastered ceiling with principal beam supported on double brackets springing from paired pilasters. Accommodation range has a rear corridor and eared fireplace surrounds in bedrooms. HISTORY: the 1850s mess buildings forms part of the original Horseshoe Barracks, built for the British School of Gunnery which opened in 1856. The later accommodation building is included for its interest in the development of the whole mess complex. (PSA Drawings Collection, NMR, Swindon: RA Barracks and Old Ranges: 1898-: CTR 359-360; Glennie D: Gunners Town: History of Shoeburyness: Civic Publications: 1948-).


Listing NGR: TQ9388784524

Legacy

The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System number:

427553

Legacy System:

LBS

Sources

Books and journals
Glennie, D, Gunners Town History of Shoeburyness, (1948)

End of official list entry

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