Exploring Kent's Past

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Monument details

Summary

Most of the original ancillary structures, comprising stores, canteens, workshops, gardens etc. stood on terraces to the west of the main steps. Included within this group of ancillery buildings was an elaborate residence with its own gardens which was the Clerk of Works Quarters, located at the north western corner of the barracks complex. (location accurate to the nearest 1m based on available information)

Monument Types

• OFFICERS QUARTERS (Demolished, Post Medieval to Modern - 1805 AD? to 1960 AD?)

Full description

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Summarised from report:

Most of the original ancillary structures, comprising stores, canteens, workshops, gardens etc. stood on terraces to the west of the main steps. Included within this group of ancillery buildings was an elaborate residence with its own gardens which was the Clerk of Works Quarters, located at the north western corner of the barracks complex. It had been demolished before 1942 and a single Nissen type building erected on its site. The house was approached along a track decending from Drop redoubt Road and a path from the top of the main steps: both routes remain as woodland paths, carried in a cutting and along a terrace respectively. The site is very overgrown and there is very little sign of the house and there is a level platform contained by the massive terrace scarps on the south west and north east, with smaller scraps, 0.7m and 1m high respectively, defining the north western and south eastern edges. Part of a revetment wall, 1.2m high, is just visible on the south west where the rest had been covered by erosion of the terrace scarp itself. A similar revetment scarp exists on the north east and has been re-faced with a thick layer of concrete, probably of Second World War date: at its north western end is the top of a shaft or drain. In the centre of the platform is a concrete floor, rebated at the edge to take a course of brickwork, the base of the Second World War building. (1)

A plan which dates to 1861, immediately prior to the 1860's scheme of works which were undertaken at the barracks site, gives detail of the buildings constructed during the Napoleonic works, including the Clerk of Workd Quarters and includes lables of specific buildings. (2)

<1> RCHME, 2000, The Western Heights, Dover, Kent. Report No 4: The Grand Shaft Barracks, 19th and 20th-century infantry barracks (Unpublished document). SKE17499.

<2> Unknown, 1861, Dover, General Plan of the Western Heights Barracks (Plan). SKE51541.

Sources and further reading

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