Exploring Kent's Past

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Monument details

Summary

The Kitchener barracks consist of barrack buildings and an underground hospital. The hospital comprises a 600 bed 'field' hospital in a tunnel system, now covered by a central grassed area. Watching briefs in 2000 focussed on the two guardhouses to the north and south of the main barracks. They were dated from the early to mid 19th century and were built of red brick and yellow stock bricks. The southern building has now been demolished.

Monument Types

• BARRACKS (Post Medieval to Modern - 1757 AD to 2050 AD)
• HOSPITAL (Modern - 1901 AD? to 2007 AD)

Full description

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Kitchener Barracks was constructed from 1757 onwards on what had previously been woodland and fields. It was intended to house troops used for the land defences of Chatham. The barracks was roughly rectangular and consisted of north-south barrack blocks with a large parade ground to the east. The barracks evolved through the 19th and 20th centuries and many buildings have been repeatedly replaced.

Brick built complex of buildings. Central grassed area covers a 600 bed 'field' hospital which consists of a tunnel system. Underground hospital sealed off because of the danger of terrorist attack. (1)

Watching briefs on two guardhouses to the north and south o fthe main barracks. The northern building dates to the early 19th century and constructed of yellow stock and red brick. The southern had a "colonial" type verandah and was built of yellow stock bricks between the beginning and middle of the 19th century. This building has been demolished. (2)

The building was considered for listing in 2013 but rejected. The original drawings for the Khartoum Building at Kitchener Barracks are dated 6 October 1938 but construction was not completed before the outbreak of World War II. Aerial photographs taken in 1948 show the range fronting onto the parade ground, the two cross wings and the central cookhouse range completed, but the final range along Dock Road which completes the double H-plan had not yet been built. By 1953 the last of the C18 barracks on the site of the Sandhurst Block, those along Dock Road, had been demolished, but the Khartoum building was not itself completed until the early 1960s.

The neo-Georgian Sandhurst block, known as the Khartoum Building, is built on a sloping site to the west of the parade ground. Due to the slope, the eastern range is of three storeys plus basement, while the western and cross ranges are of four storeys.

MATERIALS: the building is of buff brick laid in Flemish bond, with a rusticated ground floor and basement and dressings in red brown brick. The hipped roofs are slate and floors and stairs are reinforced concrete.

Windows are timber sashes. The two main entrances have Portland stone porticos.

PLAN: conjoined double H-plan with an attached flat-roofed, two-storey, cookhouse range in the resultant central courtyard. The building is aligned north-south along the western edge of the barracks site and fronts onto the parade ground to the east.

EXTERIOR: the symmetrical eastern parade ground elevation is a total of 45 bays long, comprising a central range of 15 bays and two wings of 13 bays each with short, deeply recessed, linking sections of two bays containing the entrances, each of which has a tetrastyle Tuscan portico. The ground floor is of rusticated red-brown brick below a narrow stringcourse. Fenestration is of timber sash windows, mostly of two-over-two panes with margin lights, those to the upper floors in plain square headed openings. The ground floor windows have flat gauged brick arches with a pronounced keystone and quarry tile sills, except in the central range where they alternate with round-arched windows rising above the rustication and set into relieving arches. Entrances, each beneath a portico have a pair of glazed doors with horizontal panels beneath an overlight with shaped glazing bars flanked on each side by a tall two-over-three pane sash with margin lights. The central range has a lantern with a clock and weathervane. Rainwater hoppers bear a crown and the date ‘1939’. The western elevation is also symmetrical, in 45 bays, comprising slightly projecting wings of seven bays flanking a centre section of 25 bays and with end pavilions of three bays, on the line of the central section. The projecting outer wings have low parapets extending above the eaves. The ground floor is rusticated and set on a plinth, both of red-brown brick. Quoins, a moulded string course over the third storey, dressings to the central first floor window and to alternate windows on the first floor of the projecting wings are also in red-brown brick. Windows have gauged brick arches with keystones to the ground floor while those to the
upper floors are in plain rectangular openings. Single-bay entrances are set near either end of the central section and reached by flights of stone steps with low brick balustrades. The northern of these has been modified by the addition of a loading bay with red brick retaining walls.

The north and south elevations of the pavilions of the two principal ranges are of three bays and the cross ranges are of 13 bays. The rustication is extended round the returns of the end pavilions. In the corner of the central courtyard formed by the two cross ranges are square, flat-roofed, stair towers. The majority of the courtyard space is taken up by the two-storey cookhouse block, with its central brick chimney, which, because of the slope of the ground, adjoins the eastern range at ground floor level. Vehicle access to the courtyard is via passageways at the western end of the cross-ranges. Steel fire-escapes occupy the first two bays of the interior elevations of the arms of the H-plan, adjoining the end pavilions.

INTERIOR: other than on the ground floor and basement of the eastern range, single-banked barrack rooms of varying sizes, opening onto interior corridors, occupy all floors of the two principal ranges. In the eastern range, apart from the conversion of the original men's sitting rooms to barrack rooms and removal of luggage rooms, the barrack rooms remain much as originally laid out, although accommodating fewer personnel per room. In the western range there are a larger number of smaller rooms than on the 1938 plans, but these appear to have been laid out like this when the range was eventually built in the 1960s. The washing facilities occupy the cross-ranges as originally planned, although the fittings are all modern. On the ground floor of the eastern range the central dining hall remains in its original use, largely refitted but retaining the original steel columns. The large room at the northern end, which was originally a clothing store, was converted and sub-divided for modern recreational facilities in the 1980s. The southern wing originally contained three classrooms but this has been converted to accommodation. The entrance halls and staircases remain much as built. The original glazed double entrance doors with patterned transom lights survive while the Art Deco mannered cantilevered stairs have wrought iron balustrades and teak handrails.

SUPPLEMENTARY ITEMS: a K6 telephone kiosk is situated inside the southern portico. (3)

Archaeological evaluation in 2017 found extensive surviving barrack features across the site. Remains dating to the original phase of barracks construction in c 1757 survived across the site. These included brick walls, footings and culverts. In addition the floors (mostly brick) associated with the Command Engineers building, Artillery barrack, Infirmary and Quarter Masters Store were recorded in good states of preservation. The 18th century barracks were extensively remodelled/modernised by 1864. Many new buildings were orientated towards recreational activities including: a wine store, racket courts, a skittle alley and reading rooms. A series of Cook Houses and a bake house, new washrooms and an infant’s school as well as an enlarged Commandant’s Quarters, underlined the expansion of the site to the formal enclosed institution we see today. Parts of these later additions,
including the skittle alley, bake House and Commandant’s Quarters were also recorded.(5)

Peter Kendall, 2006, Historic barracks in Medway (Unpublished document). SKE15939.

<1> Victor Smith and Ron Crowdy, Thames Gateway Assesment: Gazetteer of Defence Sites (Index). SKE6445.

<2> Canterbury Archaeological Trust, 2000, Two Archaeological Watching Brief Projects at Kitchener Barracks, Chatham (Unpublished document). SKE12349.

<3> English Heritage, 2013, English Heritage (Listing) Advice Report for Khartoum Building, Kitchener Barracks, Chatham (Unpublished document). SKE23998.

<5> Museum of London Archaeology, 2017, KITCHENER BARRACKS Khartoum Road Chatham County of Kent Report on an archaeological evaluation (Unpublished document). SKE52897.

Sources and further reading