Exploring Kent's Past

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Monument details

Summary

A set of Hut barracks were developed at the Western Outworks of the Citadel in 1890-1. The structures built may have been part of the mobilisation policy which required barracks to be capable of receiving large-scale troop reinforcements at times of need. Hut 6 Was located in the south eastern corner of the complex. (location accurate to the nearest 1m based on available information)

Monument Types

• BARRACKS (Disused, Post Medieval to Modern - 1891 AD? to 1945 AD?)

Full description

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Summarised from report:

A set of Hut barracks were developed at the Western Outworks of the Citadel in 1890-1. The structures built may have been part of the mobilisation policy which required barracks to be capable of receiving large-scale troop reinforcements at times of need. The Citadel - now referred to as Citadel Barracks - had to accommodate a regular infantry battalion (up to 1000 men) and be able to provide temporary accommodation for reservists. It is possible that the 1890-1 buildings in part provided peacetime accommodation for the gun crews, access to the battery being provided by a bridge crossing the North Ditch. The surviving buildings of are single-storeyed and constructed of red brick on a blue brick plinth and the roofs were originally of Welsh slate. Most of them were arranged on either side of a terraced road originally linking the Citadel with the South and North Flank Casemates.

They are all thirteen-bay barrack huts and five of them survive, nos 1-5, all bearing a terra-cotta plaque on one gable, with the cipher of Queen Victoria and the date 1890 a modern store and boiler house occupies the site of no 6, which was demolished after 1947. A plan of 1911 indicates that nos 1-6 were originally constructed to a common plan, which follows a design proposal of 1890. Several of the huts occupy terraced sites, which are cut into the Parade Ground, but this has no defensive purpose and in fact the exposed position of the buildings reflects the waning importance of the Western Heights as a defensible artillery fort. There have been several minor flat-roofed additions, some of the stacks have been dismantled and all of the huts have been rendered on their south and west faces, but their external form remains largely intact.

Each hut consisted of two large barrack rooms placed either side of a central area in which the entrance, Sergeant’s Bunk (a small room) and Ablution Room were located. Each barrack room accommodated 21 men, 12 along the front and 9 along the rear: the difference reflects the position of the stove, roughly central to the rear wall. Between 1921 and 1929, the complement of each hut was reduced to a sergeant and 36 men. Bathing facilities were removed to provision elsewhere on the site and a WC took the place of the bath cubicle; the other original bath position was occupied by a urinal housed in a small flat-roofed projection on the rear wall. One of these survives on hut no 5. Drawings dated 1940 record repairs to nos 1 and 3, indicating that they were substantially unaltered at that date. Between 1929 and 1947 no 4 was adapted to provide a Games Room in the western barrack room, while the eastern room was divided between a Recreation Room and quarters for six men. (1)

<1> English Heritage, 2004, The Western Heights, Dover, Kent: Report No. 2: The Citadel (Unpublished document). SKE17690.

Sources and further reading

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