Perimeter Wall and Attached Guard House, Magazine, Stables, Garage and Canteen

Details

740-1/4/619 FOULSTON AVENUE 09-NOV-98 ST BUDEAUX (South side) Perimeter wall and attached guard hous e, magazine, stables, garage and canteen (Formerly listed as: FOULSTON AVENUE ST BUDEAUX ENTRANCE GATEWAY AND WALLS TO BULL POI NT BARRACKS (BARRACKS NOT INCLUDED))

GV II Perimeter wall, guard house, magazine, stables and canteen at infantry barracks, now training centre. 1855-8. Plymouth limestone ashlar and rubble with granite dressings, English bond red brick with stone plinths, with hipped slate roofs.

PLAN: Square outline with E guard house, S magazine flanked by stables and garages both sides. Canteen to SW, forage store to NE and magazine to NW.

EXTERIOR: Tall stone perimeter wall, ashlar to the E entrance front and rubble to the 3 sides, with capped granite piers and coping, projecting at corners to form bastions covering alternate sides, with rifle slits. Entrance has a wide pediment containing a shield over a round-arched gateway with rusticated dressings and double metal doors, and smaller segmental-arched doorways each side.
Guard house: single storey; 4-window range has deep overhanging roof to front supported on 6 slim cast-iron columns, rubbed brick heads to outer doorways and to horned 6/6-pane sashes between; the left-hand part obscured by mid-C20 extension. The wall to the left ramps down with a moulded coping to enclose a small exercise yard, with a doorway.
Magazine: small brick magazine with end gables, behind a tall ashlar wall with a central doorway with raised surround and corner piers. Stables and garages each side partly open-fronted with timber columns, double garage doors to the left and metal-framed windows to the right.
Canteen: 2 storey; 5-window range. Symmetrical front with rubbed brick flat-arches to doorway with 4-pane overlight and double doors, and to horned 6/6-pane sashes.
NE corner contains a 2 storey; 1-window store, probably for forage, with a wide doorway, and small 12-pane ground-floor window and upper taking-in door in the end gable.
NW corner contains a 2 storey; 1-window store, probably formerly a magazine, with steps up to an upper doorway flanked by blind slits, and an altered doorway and first-floor casement window in the end gable.

HISTORY: the barracks was built for the guard of the nearby Bull Point ordnance yard, which was erected for the Ordnance Board between 1851 and 1855, and to protect the northern approaches of Devonport Dockyard from invasion. This is a very complete and unaltered example of a defensible barracks of the type built in the 1840s and 50s, and is the only barracks built around Devonport for the defence of the Dockyard which still remains. The closest example of such a defensible barracks is located close to the dockyard at Pembroke in Wales, the 'police barracks' in the industrial north of England having two survivals (Fulwood Barracks, Preston, and Hillsborough Barracks, Sheffield) which also retain bastioned but less defensible walls.

Legacy

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

Legacy System number:

473448

Legacy System:

LBS

End of official list entry

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