Exploring Kent's Past

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Monument details

Summary

A group of now demolished soldiers and officers accomodation blocks and associated buildings (including stables) were arranged around the parade ground at the Western Heights. (location accurate to the nearest 1m based on available information).

Monument Types

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

Full description

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The accomodation blocks were arranged around and overlooking the parade ground, as far as was possible, conforming to the accepted plan of the period. All of these were built as part of the original Napoleonic design and comprised large austere blocks of double-pile plan. Construction was of brick, laid to English-bond with flat arch window heads, deep sashes and half hipped slate roof concealing a central valley.

The stables for the officers chargers were placed in an L-shaped block to the east of the Officers Mess. The 1860 plan shows a 3 by 1 bay, three storey block with stalls and a forage loft above, accomodated in an arcade of semicircular arches two storeys high. The third story, conventionally fenestrated, accomodated a guardroom. Loose boxes and a further forage store were placed in a similar 2 by 1 bay wing making up the L. An enclosed yard was formed in the angle of the two wings.

Nothing was certainly observed of this building, except perhaps a patch of stone setts in the surface of the present track, which originally may have been outside the south eastern elevation. A concrete floor can be seen outside the site of the south-western elevation. (1)

A portion of one of the exterior walls of the stable block and the associated cobbled yard surface was uncovered during an archaeological evaluation undertaken by Canterbury Archaeological Trust at the Grand Shaft Barracks in 2017. (2)

The earliest plan which shows the completed Napoleonic works which were undertaken at the Grand Shaft Barracks dates to 1810. (3) A later plan which dates to 1861, immediately prior to the 1860's scheme of works which were undertaken at the barracks site, gives further detail of the buildings constructed during the Napoleonic works, including lables of specific buildings. (4)

Many of the buildings of Grand Shaft Barracks are recorded in detail on a set of plans, mainly of the 1860s and 1870s, which were probably prepared to accompany the alterations and new building resulting from the recommendations of the Commission. The plan/elevation for the Stables shows the interior layout of the building and a number of external features. (5)

<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> Canterbury Archaeological Trust, 2018, Grand Shaft Barracks, Western Heights, Dover, Evaluation Report (Unpublished document). SKE51431.

<3> Major W H Ford, Royal Engineers, 1811, Plan Shewing the Appropriation of the Ordnance Lands on the Western Heights Dover 1811 (Map). SKE51523.

<4> Unknown, 1861, Dover, General Plan of the Western Heights Barracks (Plan). SKE51541.

<5> Royal Engineers, 1860, As-built drawings of the stables at Grand Shaft Barracks at Western Heights (Plan). SKE51565.

Sources and further reading

Related records