Building record 86/1/54 - Former Weedon Barracks, west blast house of series of four in magazine enclosure

{1} Blast house. Early/mid C19. Red brick, slate roof. No windows. Filled with earth to contain explosion. Short, lower gabled wing to south end for sentries with central door flanked by 12-pane sash windows, all with segmental heads. Stone-coped gables.

{3} Blast house, also known as a traverse. 1807-11. Flemish bond red brick with gauged brick arches, and with dentilled eaves to side walls; stone-coped kneelers to slate roof.

PLAN: Rectangular plan, aligned north-south, the central blast house being filled with earth and flanked at each end by a small office and Shifting Room, for changing into specialist magazine clothing. Only the southern sections of the latter survive, those to north having been demolished.
EXTERIOR: Gabled south elevations have segmental arches over central doorway and flanking windows (originally beaded 6-panel door and 6/6-pane sash).

INTERIOR: blast house originally earth-filled, and retains pegged king post roof. The interiors of the office/Shifting Rooms originally had boarded or panelled walls.
Part of a unique planned military-industrial complex, complete with its own defensible transport system and surrounding walls. Although the magazines (drawings of 1816 in Royal Engineers Library, W140 (D38), and later plans and drawings also archived there) are smaller in terms of their individual scale than the late 18th century example at Priddy's Hard opposite the naval dock at Portsmouth (listed grade I and like the Weedon examples built to the distinctive British double-vaulted plan), as a group they had no rival until the suite of traversed magazines were built at Bull Point, Plymouth, in the 1850s (Scheduled Ancient Monument). Catenary arches were first used at Tipnor in the 1790s and then Colonel D'Arcy's magazine at Upnor. The use of traverses makes the group highly innovatory in terms of its planning, blast walls of earth (sometimes faced in brick) being henceforth a characteristic features of magazine complexes. These traverses have also uniquely assumed an architectural form.

For full details of the site see description of Storehouse No 2.

{4} Powder magazines and blast houses (building numbers 21 to 18 inclusive). Traces of olive green/grey camouflage paint visible on the brick east and west elevations of these buildings but appears absent from the north and south elevations and probably also from building number 29, the westermost of the powder magazines. The painting takes the form of large rounded forms, different on each elevation. Presumed of WWI, or more likely WW2 origin?

{6} Undated photo;

<1> Clews Architects, 1980s, Database for Listing of Historic Buildings of Special Architectural Interest: Northamptonshire, 16/193 (checked) (Digital archive). SNN102353.

<2> List of Buildings of Special Architectural or Historic Interest ("Greenback"), F06 (unchecked) (Catalogue). SNN44900.

<3> ENGLISH HERITAGE, Ongoing, National Heritage List for England, (checked) (Website). SNN107872.

<4> Cadman, G., 1996, Oral Report to SMR, (checked) (Oral Report). SNN109141.

<5> Cadman G., 2014, 20th Century Military Archaeology in Northamptonshire: Logs 1, 2 & 3, p.29 (checked) (Report). SNN104868.

<6> Photographs of buildings in Weedon Bec (Photographs). SNN114204.

Record last edited

Oct 12 2022 2:09PM