Description

This list entry was subject to a Minor Enhancement on 30 July 2025 to amend the name, address, description and to reformat the text to current standards

TM 9924 NW
584/8/10011

COLCHESTER
LE CATEAU ROAD
Royal Artillery Barracks (also known as Le Cateau Barracks)
Barrack Block B

(Formerly listed as Cavalry Barracks B, Le Cateau Barracks, Colchester Garrison)

GV
II

Former Royal Artillery barracks, built in 1874-75 to a design by Lieutenant General Charles Brisbane Ewart RE, Deputy Director of Works for Barracks at the War Office.

MATERIALS: red brick with yellow brick bands and stone lintels, slate roof and brick ridge stacks.

PLAN: rectangular single-depth plan with corner officers' stables and stores.

EXTERIOR: two-storey; 6:4:6-window range. Similar front and rear elevations have coped end gables and patterned brick eaves, with projecting two-window single-storey blocks at each end and a central pediment gable. Square stable windows extend along north side, with central segmental-arched double doors, the end blocks have left-hand doors and a right-hand window, and a louvred oculus; 4/4-pane sashes to barrack rooms above. South side has a band of patterned brick below the stable windows, and three doorways separated by windows to the central gable; the upper floor are set back to form a balcony between the gable and end blocks, with diagonal iron railings.

INTERIOR: the stables, divided into two sections, have a central aisle between cast-iron posts dividing the stalls, supporting a brick jack-arch floor with ties between the joists; office and storerooms to each end. A central imperial stair leads up to the 22-man barrack rooms each side of the NCO's room.

HISTORY: Le Cateau is the last surviving example of the new layout of cavalry barracks developed at Aldershot in the 1850s. As a fireproof building with enhanced ventilation for the men, an advanced design of cavalry barracks for the day, though using the traditional plan of men's rooms over stables. Part of a group with the other barrack buildings, Le Cateau was the second permanent barracks built at Colchester after the adjoining Calvary Barracks which were built in 1862-64.

SOURCES: Dietz P: Garrison: Ten Military Towns: London: 1986, pp 3; PSA Drawings Collection, NMR, Swindon: CTR 130-158.

Listing NGR: TL9929324518

External Links

• Wikidata Q26656349

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

Recommended Books

• 
  Yorkshire: York and the East Riding (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  London 3: North West: North West v. 3 (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Devon (Pevsner Buildings of England)
• 
  [(Shropshire)] [By (author) Nikolaus Pevsner] published on (January, 1958)
• 
  Pevsner's Architectural Glossary (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Introductions)
• 
  Gloucestershire 1: The Cotswolds: Cotswolds Pt. 1 (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)