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 SW
584/18/10012

COLCHESTER
LE CATEAU ROAD
Former Riding School, Calvary Barracks

(Formerly listed as Former Riding School, Le Cateau Barracks, Colchester Garrison, LE CATEAU ROAD)

GV
II
Former calvary riding school, built 1862-64 to designs by Captain Douglas Galton RE, Assistant Inspector-General of Fortifications.

MATERIALS: brick with yellow brick dressings, and a slate roof.

PLAN: rectangular.

EXTERIOR: single storey; fourteen-bay range. The sides articulated by full-height buttresses, each bay with an upper segmental-arched six-light window with transom, and alternate red and yellow brick voussoirs, north-east end has an oculus, and wide double doors, with a lower three-window range office block with hipped roof attached, plate-glass sashes, and a door in the right-hand end. South-west end has a tall round-arched upper doorway.

INTERIOR: has metal trusses with wrought-iron ties and paired struts, with battered panels to lower walls to prevent horses becoming trapped; a window looks down from the front office.

HISTORY: riding schools were an important part of cavalry barracks throughout the C19 for exercising and practicing maneuvers. This example is included as part of a near complete complex, the most important remaining one of its type on an English barracks. The Calvary Barracks was the first permanent barracks at Colchester and is the penultimate surviving example of the new layout of barracks first developed at Aldershot in the 1850s for large-scale training, with the adjoining Royal Artillery Barracks, built 1874-75, being the last.

SOURCES: Dietz P: Garrison: Ten Military Towns: London: 1986, pp 3; 1863: CTR 130-158; Papers of the Royal Engineers: Ewart CB Colonel: Military Riding Schools: Chatham: 22 June 1862
Listing NGR: TL9923024389

External Links

• Wikidata Q26656350

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.

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