The Western Barrack Block of the Royal Cavalry Barracks, Canterbury

The western barrack block of the Royal Cavalry Barracks, Canterbury

kirsty bone and peter seary

with Luke Barber, Peter Clark, Laura O’Shea and Andrew Richardson

In 2008 the Canterbury Archaeological Trust excavated a site in Canterbury’s north-eastern suburbs, between Hudson Road, Brymore Road, and Military Road (NGR: 615905 158618; Fig. 1). The site had lately housed garages, but had previously formed part of Canterbury’s Royal Cavalry Barracks. Remains were found of buildings and structures of various dates between the barracks’ construction, in 1794, and their demolition, c.1967. Most notably, part of the foundations were unearthed of one of the two original barrack blocks, housing stables on the ground floor and barrack rooms over. The Trust had previously (1998) examined a building of similar date and function, still standing, at Deal South Barracks, which aided considerably in the interpretation of these remains. Brief documentary research was also undertaken.

The construction of the Royal Cavalry Barracks, from 1794

The Royal Cavalry Barracks at Canterbury were built as part of Britain’s first major programme of barrack building – precipitated by the threat from France, and specifically by the declaration of war by the Revolutionary government in 1793. This overcame earlier objections to barracks, such as the perceived risk of a military coup. Previously, troops had been billeted in houses and inns, but, as they concentrated in the South-East, this was proving increasingly onerous:

Canterbury being usually the head quarters for a regiment of horse in times of peace, the innkeepers and publicans of that city soon felt the great increase of the army very severely, and, therefore, were among the first to petition for a removal of the heavy burden of quartering.¹

The new permanent barracks built by the newly formed Barracks Board – working rapidly, and spending lavishly, under the direction of the Barrack Master General, Colonel DeLancey.² More than a dozen of these barracks were for cavalry, including stations those at Deal, Christchurch, Barnstaple, Modbury, Totnes, Taunton, Bridport, Weymouth, Wareham, Trowbridge, and Southampton. Canterbury was among the minority located at some distance from the coast. It was also more than twice the size of most, probably reflecting Canterbury’s role as a regimental headquarters, and its strategic position in east Kent:

The situation of Canterbury being nearly central from Margate, Ramsgate, Deal, and Dover (each of which places has been more or less used for the embarkation and disembarkation of troops) has always been considered of much importance as a Military Station for Cavalry, Infantry, and Artillery, and a large force of each of these Arms [was] stationed there during the [Napoleonic] wars.³

The site chosen for the barracks comprised nearly 16½ acres fronting the east side of the Sturry Road (and was bounded, to the rear, by another parallel track out to Fordwich).⁴ It was considered ‘fine pasture land [...] very pleasant and healthy, being on a dry soil, having a gentle declivity, and constant supply of fine water’.⁵ It was part of the Hales family’s Old Park estate, and was purchased from Sir Edward Hales on 10 April 1794.⁶

Construction is thought to have begun on 6 May, with the first brick laid on the 26th of that month,⁷ and the barracks were probably more or less complete by the end of September the following year. The cost, including purchasing the site and furnishing the buildings was estimated to have been about £40,000.⁸ These were the first of a large group of barracks to be built along this side of the Sturry Road – standing, at first, in relative isolation, within a rectangular compound enclosed by a tall timber palisade.

The three principal buildings formed a single row, set well back behind a large parade ground (Fig. 2).⁹ They were of two storeys plus an attic,¹⁰ and were of red brick, laid in English bond, under hipped slate roofs; they had sash windows with gauged-brick flat arches and stone sills. A large, central building, with a tripartite facade and a Doric porch, housed ‘handsome apartments for the officers, suitable to their respective ranks’. A blind lunette in its pediment contained ‘the royal arms, with supporters, and appropriate military emblems’ formed in fashionable artificial stone.¹¹ To either side of this, detached, stood the two long barrack blocks, containing ‘the stabling, and accommodations for the subalterns and privates, in a double storey over them’.¹² Together, these three ‘elegant and extensive’ buildings amply reflected Canterbury’s importance.¹³

Other, predominantly red-brick, buildings ranged forwards down the eastern and western sides of the parade ground. These included the ‘riding-school, forage barns, and granaries’ together with some ‘additional stabling, the suttling house, the guard houses and other accessory offices’.¹⁴ Considerable symmetry was contrived between the two sides, despite the buildings’ miscellaneous functions.

The western barrack block

The 2008 excavation uncovered part of the foundations of the western barrack block, with a portion of the stable yard to the rear; this part of the barracks is shown in greater detail in Figs 3 and 4. The barrack block was of simple rectangular footprint, about 101m (331ft) long by 13.7m (45ft) wide. It rose from a simple plinth, with a multitude of neat doors and windows at ground-floor level; sparser and more regular fenestration to the first floor, and attic dormers. It was mirrored more or less perfectly, inside and out, by the eastern barrack block on the other side of the barracks.

Footings of part of the southern external wall [S481] were revealed during the excavation, together with parts of the three easternmost internal cross-walls [S100, S254, and S322]. These were of red brick, laid in English bond. The external wall was about 0.7m wide, plus stepped footings, the internal walls about 0.5m. Probably, the entirety of the flooring at ground level was solid originally – the majority of this paved with brick, bedded in firm clay.¹⁵

The original stabling

The greater part of the ground floor of the barrack block was occupied by stables: seven for the troops’ horses, and three for those of the officers. These all appear to have had brick floors, originally, bedded in clay. The original stall divisions probably comprised no more than timber heel posts, with tethering rings and mangers in the wall face. Behind these, in the passageways, ran gutters for drainage, channelled into brick-built soakaways. These soakaways were situated centrally under the passage floors, three-quarters of the way from the north side of the building.

The troops’ stables

The troops’ stables were each about 12.5m (41ft) long (north-south) by 9m (29ft 6in.) wide, internally. They each provided two rows of eight stalls, to either side of a central cross-passage. Central stable-doors, in the north and south elevations, were flanked by windows overlooking the stalls on each side. There were small ventilators, set low in the external walls, at the corners of each stable room.

Part of one of the foundations of one of these troops’ stables was exposed at the north-west corner of the 2008 excavation. The construction horizon within the stable was marked by a thick dump of mortar, abutting the base of the room’s east wall. Brick pads, about 0.48m square, survived for the heel posts, representing the five southernmost stall divisions down each side [G19]. These were almost certainly original. A bed of firm yellow clay had been laid around the pads – presumably as a base for the brick floor.¹⁶ The soakaway in this stable, under the passage floor [S164], was provided with a circular, Portland-stone lid with a ring-shaped, iron handle.

The officers’ stables

The officers’ stables, situated at each end of the building, were of similar length to those of the troops but were only about 4.5m (15ft) wide. They each provided a single row of seven stalls – commensurately wider than those for the troops’ horses – with a doorway and a window at each end.¹⁷ Parts of two such stables were exposed in the north-east corner of the 2008 excavation. These occupied the two easternmost divisions of the barrack block – convenient for the officers’ accommodation adjoining; the third lay at the other end of the building.

The penultimate stable, at this end, revealed another brick-built drain and soakaway [S183], under the passage, directly in line with the one in the troops’ stable.¹⁸ Levelling deposits of brick rubble, mortar, sand, and clay were laid over this structure, and were, in turn, perforated by the construction cuts for the heel-post pads. This sequence suggests the soakaway formed the original drainage provision; it had later been capped in concrete, perhaps when the gutter was diverted into the stable yard.

The brick pads for the heel-posts, about 0.5m square and provided with a stone cap [G24], were, again, sealed into position by the yellow-clay floor bed.¹⁹

Ground-floor rooms and hallways

Running across the building, interspersed between the stables, were two hallways – one in each half of the building – with doors at each end. The front (north) door, in each case, was enclosed by a small lobby, around which climbed a narrow, dog-leg staircase leading up to a first-floor landing, and thence to the attic. Adjoining each hallway, toward the middle of the building, was a pair of sizeable rooms, each with a window in its respective elevation; the southern room, in each case, was about double the size of the northern – roughly 8 x 5m (26 x 16½ft) compared with 4m (13ft) x 5m. The original functions of these rooms are, as yet, unclear, but they may have included stores and workshops.

Parts of the eastern rooms and hallway were exposed during the 2008 excavation, lying between the troops’ and the officers’ stables already described. This brought to light the southern end of the brick footing of the wall which enclosed the northern lobby, and which had carried the staircase up to the first floor. This brickwork [S331] rose from the original construction horizon, confirming it was original to the building. An east-west wall dividing the two adjoining rooms [S339] proved to have been integral with the adjoining cross wall [S254] – confirming that this division, too, was original.²⁰ Next-to-nothing of the smaller room to the north was exposed, but the entire southern room fell within the excavated area.

A truncated deposit of yellow-brown clay [S147, not illustrated], observed atop the construction horizon within the footprint of this room, will have formed part of the bed for the original solid floor, probably of brick, which was later dug out and replaced with a sprung timber floor. Evidence also survived for what may have been an early or original feature in the north-east corner of this room. This comprised a brick structure [G20], roughly 1m square and at least 0.6m deep, with a central void. This partly underpinned the north wall of the room [S339], which had begun to slump into it. Gaps, perhaps for timbers, were evident in the uppermost surviving courses on its east and west sides. It had been backfilled with seven distinct deposits of clay silt, of which the earliest contained a pot fragment dated between c.1780 and 1820.

The first floor and attic

The first floor was bisected, end to end, by ‘a gloomy corridor of considerable length’, with a window in each elevation.²¹ Its timber-framed partitions may well have been clad with timber planks.²² Flanking this corridor, over each of the troops’ stables, were a pair of small, rectangular barrack rooms, each for eight men. There were two more on the south side for the storey – one opposite each landing. Each was lit by a wide window – perhaps of Yorkshire-sash form – and heated by a large fireplace on one of the cross walls.²³ Together, these sixteen barrack rooms will have housed the ‘128 privates’ listed in this building in 1808.²⁴ There was no separate mess for the ‘men’ in the original build so the output of the cookhouse would probably have been consumed herein. Eight smaller squarish rooms, over the officers’ stables and adjoining the landings, housed quartermasters and sergeants. The latter may well have been interspersed with the barrack rooms to better oversee (and overhear) the troops. These small rooms may have been marginally less noisome than the barrack rooms over the troops’ stables.

The attic was in use for storage and possibly workshops – as reflected by the queen- and princess-post roof construction and the rows of small dormer windows. It tended to get uncomfortably hot in warm weather.

The stable yard

The original stable yards, behind the barrack blocks, remain somewhat obscure. The earliest plans we have seen are rather blocky, and tend to omit details of stable-yard furniture. Within the area of excavation, the ground of the stable yard had been extensively disturbed, removing stratigraphic relationships among the various surviving features. It is difficult, as yet, to say much about this yard – how it was paved, for example.

By 1806, there was a cookhouse behind the middle of each barrack block, on the main site boundary.²⁵ These were equipped with large boilers for boiling up the men’s rations. To either side of these, near-opposite the ends of each barrack block, were pairs of dung pits – probably, but not certainly, original (Fig. 3).²⁶ Part of the floor and footings of one of these [G29] was uncovered at the southern edge of the excavation; part of its brick-on-edge floor survived, worn smooth by use. Close to the south wall of the barracks, and spaced roughly half-way between the cookhouse and the dung pit on each side, stood a long water-trough, fed by a pump at one end. This pump proved, on excavation, to stand over a brick-lined well [G31], a little over 1m wide.

Early use of the barracks

At the start of October 1795, the New Romney Fencible Cavalry, or ‘New Romney light dragoons’,²⁷ occupied their new headquarters in the Cavalry Barracks at Canterbury, under the command of Major Cholmeley Dering. This was one of two units of fencible cavalry that had been formed in the Cinque Ports the previous year, in response to the imminent threat of invasion. They remained at Canterbury until early 1797 when they were ordered to Ireland to counter the rapidly deteriorating situation there.²⁸

During the remainder of the Napoleonic wars, a host of further barracks and military buildings, both permanent and temporary, were erected at Canterbury, by the Board of Ordnance and by private speculators. Many of these ranged along the same side of the Sturry Road towards Canterbury. Cobbett later complained that Canterbury’s barracks, combined, occupied a greater footprint than the city within the walls.²⁹ By 1806, several additional buildings had also been raised within the Royal Cavalry Barracks, including a range of temporary buildings along the Sturry Road boundary – comprising a central building, housing armourers’, tailors’ and saddlers’ shops, flanked by long narrow sheds for carriages.

After Waterloo (1815), military demands decreased and barracks generally fell into decay. As headquarters, the Cavalry Barracks at Canterbury fared better than most. Unusually, they saw significant expenditure around 1821, when their timber palisade was replaced with a wall and/or iron railings. Considerable retrenchment was required over the barracks complex as a whole, however, as the Board of Ordnance consolidated their property. Some of the smaller barracks, on the St Gregory’s Priory site, were eventually dismantled to make way for housing. The temporary additions along the north-west side of the Cavalry Barracks appear also to have been dismantled around this time. William Cobbett passed the Canterbury Barracks in 1823, and found them neglected and depopulated:

They are perfectly enormous; but thanks be unto God, they begin to crumble down. They have a sickly hue: all is lassitude about them: endless are their lawns, their gravel walks, and their ornaments; but their lawns are unshaven, their gravel walks grassy, and their ornaments putting on the garments of ugliness. You see the grass growing opposite the door-ways. A hole in the window strikes you here and there. Lamp-posts there are, but no lamps. Here are horse-barracks, foot-barracks, artillery-barracks, engineer-barracks: a whole country of barracks; but, only here and there a soldier. The thing is actually perishing. It is typical of the state of the great thing of things. It gave me inexpressible pleasure to perceive the gloom that seemed to hang over these barracks, which once swarmed with soldiers and their blithe companions, as a hive swarms with bees. These barracks now look like the environs of a hive in winter.³⁰

Tailors’ shops in the western barrack block

A survey of 1859, printed in 1862 and ‘corrected’ in September 1864,³¹ shows the two rooms adjoining the eastern hallway on the ground floor of the western barrack block in use as ‘tailors’ shops’. The rooms adjoining the western hallway were, by this time, in use as a ‘larder’ and a ‘store’;³² those in the eastern barrack block, as ‘quartermasters’ stores’ (west), and a ‘saddletree maker’s shop’ and ‘riding school room’ (east). By this time, the original solid floor in the larger, southern, room had been dug out and replaced with a sprung timber floor, resting on brick dwarf walls (S255 and S296) (Fig. 3). This was the only timber-floored ground-floor room in this building, and one of very few in the barracks as a whole – the majority of these belonging to recent additions. By this time, the barracks were lit, inside and out, by gas.

Mid nineteenth-century sanitary reform

The Army reforms following the death of the Duke of Wellington in 1852 led to attempts to address what were seen as the insanitary and antisocial conditions in many British barracks. The ravages of disease witnessed during the Crimean War, quantified by the emerging science of statistics, promoted ‘sympathy for the suffering of the rank and file’ and ‘drew the attention of the public to the state of their barracks at home’. Here, soldiers were found to have ‘a life expectancy half that of their contemporaries in the slums outside’.³³ At this time, the quality and quantity of air in buildings was considered essential to preventing ‘miasmic’ disease. Also, the idea was finally gaining ground that the state of barrack buildings could have a bearing on the morale and morality of the troops therein. The 1855 Barracks Accommodation Report called for separate quarters for married couples (who had previously lodged in the main barrack blocks); improved kitchen and dining facilities; the replacement of the unpopular, franchised ‘canteen’ by a bar; and a greater segregation of ranks in accommodation.³⁴ The 1861 Sanitary Commission Report drew attention to the inadequacies of the typical cavalry barrack configuration, as at Canterbury, having stables on the ground floor:

Every barracks we have seen constructed on this plan is saturated throughout with ammonia and organic matter; and in cases where the barrack rooms have been shut up and unoccupied for some time, the putrescent odour experienced on entering is indescribably offensive.³⁵

This report was supplemented by an appendix, of 1863, providing a vivid account of the Canterbury’s Royal Cavalry Barracks at this date:

This barrack consists of a long range of buildings of the usual construction. The stables are on the basement, and above them are two ranges, back and front, of barrack-rooms, with an intervening gloomy corridor of considerable length, having a window at each end.

The arrangement of barrack-rooms over stables we have objected to in our previous reports, and we shall merely repeat the objection here. In all future barracks it would be very advisable, wherever practicable, to follow the example of the Maidstone cavalry barrack, and place the men and horses under separate roofs, at a distance from each other.

The barrack rooms are of the usual construction. They contain too many men, and are imperfectly ventilated by apertures in the ceilings, opening into the attics, but without any direct communication with the external air.

The following is the accommodation in the soldiers’ rooms:-

Rooms	Total regulation accommodation	Total accommodation at 600 cubic feet per man	Deficiency of accommodation per man
30	270	240	30

Each room gives accommodation for nine men, according to the present regulation. By removing one man from each room, 30 men in all, a cubic space of not much less than 600 cubic feet per man will be given.

Above the barrack rooms are extensive attics, partly used as barrack-master’s stores, partly as workshops. These workshops are all defectively ventilated, and are apt to become oppressively hot. This latter defect would be much diminished by improving the ventilation.

Beside diminishing the number of inmates, these barrack rooms require ventilation by shafts carried up from the ceiling of each room to the roof, and by separate inlets for air, protected by perforated zinc, near the ceiling. During winter, the fresh air admitted might be warmed, by being made to pass through a fire-brick chamber behind, or at the sides of the fireplace, before being admitted into the room.

The corridors require lighting and ventilation by large skylights at intervals in the roof, and by plastered shafts, the width of the corridor, rising to them from the ceiling of the corridor.

The stables have zinc ceilings, and four ventilators, one at each corner; but each stable ought to be ventilated above the roof by a shaft, to carry off the fumes, and by perforated glass in the windows.

As is usual in many cavalry barracks, the yard in the rear of the barracks is narrow and confined, and is further contracted by washhouses, kitchens, urinals and ash-pits. It would be a great advantage to reconstruct these offices at a greater distance from the barracks, by taking a piece of ground from the sick horse field adjoining.

The only places for cleaning are at the bottom of the stairs, leading up to the barrack rooms. There is one cleaning room in Canterbury barracks, but it is at present used as a butcher’s shop, and proper cleaning sheds are stated to be much wanted.

The privies consist simply of cesspits without drainage, and are in a very offensive state, although great pains have been taken to improve them, as far as their radically defective structure will admit.

Nothing effectual can be done without a thorough drainage of the whole establishment, and a sufficient water supply.

At present water is obtained from wells in the barrack yard. The supply is not sufficient for an establishment of such magnitude; the wells are too close to the privies and cesspits, and other provisions should be made for supplying the whole barracks with water without delay.

The dung heaps are placed at sufficient distance from the soldiers’ quarters, but the cesspits are too close to the quarters, and should, in fact, be removed altogether, and iron carts substituted, with daily removal of barrack refuse.

The cook-house is supplied with boilers, but has no means of roasting or baking meat.

The lavatory has no gratings for the feet, nor pegs for hanging coats on.

There are no bath-rooms nor baths.

The urinals are in the open air, and uncovered above. They should be roofed over.

The wash-house has no drying stove.

The guard-room of the Cavalry barracks is small, and requires ventilation by a roof ventilator.

The canteen is a miserable place, and is far too small for so large a number of men.³⁶

There had clearly already been attempts made to improve the sanitary condition of the barracks. ‘Great pains’ had been taken to correct the privies, and the zinc ceilings in the stables were probably a recent alteration, intended to prevent the percolation of offensive smells into the supervening barrack rooms. The ventilators in the barrack-room ceilings may also have been inserted since the rooms’ original construction, and these may well have been improved further following the survey.

Early in 1864, four blocks of married quarters were completed on the field to the south of the boundary wall, which will probably have increased the room available for the other troops.³⁷ The aforementioned 1859 barracks plan was presumably ‘corrected,’ in 1864,³⁸ with the intention of recording recent improvements. Besides the new married quarters, these included facilities aimed at raising morale such as the officers’ new ‘billiard room,’ and the ‘reading and recreation room’ in the south-west corner of the barracks. The system of drains shown on this plan may well also have been of recent completion, with a branch behind each barrack block, which may have superseded the soakaways in the stables.³⁹

An ‘ablutions shed’ had, by this time, been raised behind each barrack block. The one behind the western block fell just outside the limit of the 2008 excavation. It was, however, provided with a pump at its north-east corner, fed by a lead pipe [S178] from the original well in the stable yard [G31].

The late nineteenth century

According to a statement of Barrack Accommodation, of 1868,⁴⁰ the Cavalry Barracks, along with the Artillery and Infantry Barracks, the Northgate Barracks, and the new ‘detached quarters’ by then formed a single large cavalry depot. On 16 November 1891, the eastern barrack block of the Royal Cavalry Barracks was destroyed by fire:

Not much doubt is now entertained that the fire arose from a leakage of gas, which found its way through the ceiling into the space beneath the roof, where it is said that oil was stored. Petroleum was also stored in the building. The block was one of the oldest portions of the existing cavalry barracks, and a good deal of timber had been used in its construction. The long structure has been completely gutted, only a few of the brickwork spans over the top remaining. With the exception of the stable nearest the officers’ mess, the interior scene was one mass of smouldering ruins.⁴¹

There was considerable peril from sparks falling onto a nearby magazine, whilst part of the estimated £13-14,000 worth of damage was ‘a considerable quantity of gold lace’ among the quartermasters’ stores. The ruined block was replaced, over the following year or two, by two slightly smaller buildings, named Waterloo and Balaclava Blocks. These stood end-to-end, extending onto a sizeable new plot beyond the original eastern boundary. As part of the same programme of works, a series of narrow sloping roofs, forming open-fronted ‘litter sheds’, were cantilevered out of the southern barrack wall, between the various ancillary buildings in the stable yards.⁴²

Late nineteenth-century alterations in the western barrack block

At some point between the First Edition Ordnance Survey, in 1873, and the Second, in 1898, a major alteration was made to the troops’ accommodation in the western barrack block. The spinal corridor on the first floor was abolished, and replaced by a gallery along the front of the building at first-floor level.⁴³ This gallery, with railings of large transenna pattern, closely resembled those fronting Waterloo and Balaclava Blocks, suggesting a date around the early 1890s. The removal of the corridor allowed fourteen of the small barrack rooms – the ones over the troops’ stables – to be combined into seven larger dormitories, for ‘18 men’ each, spanning the building (Fig. 4). Two of the original barrack rooms survived, along with the original sergeants’ and quartermasters’ rooms, but were, by now, considered fit to accommodate only ‘6 men’ each.

The 2008 excavation brought to light ground-floor alterations, in the vicinity of the eastern hallway, which were most likely completed at around the same date. The original east-west wall [S339] dividing the two tailors’ shops was demolished, to below floor level, and replaced by a new wall under the ridge-line [S340]. Next, two corner fireplaces, with projecting brick bases for hearth-stones [G22], were inserted on opposite sides of the new wall, at its eastern end. Clearly, this can only have happened alongside, or after, the removal of the supervening corridor.

Also during the interval between the First and Second Edition Ordnance Surveys a larger new latrine block, with urinals, was built against the boundary wall to the east of the cook house behind the western barrack block. This required the demolition of the existing dung pit (G29), which was replaced with a larger structure further along the wall. The stable-yard paving was also replaced.⁴⁴ Still of granite setts, it now extended all the way south to the boundary wall; and the lines of the gutters in the barrack-block stables were now propagated, through small holes low in its south wall, to a new gutter, running down the middle of the stable yard. The water troughs were also presumably replaced or resited at this time; probably, by now, they were supplied by mains water.

Alterations in the stables, late nineteenth or early twentieth century

At some point in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century, alterations were also made in the troops’ and officers’ stables. In each of the three stables investigated during the 2008 excavation, additional sets of brick pads [G18, G23, and G25], about 0.35m square, had been inserted, in smaller and less regular construction cuts dug down through the clay, at the head of the stalls. These are not a very usual feature in stable construction – typically, the head-ends of any stall divisions would have been fixed into the wall. They probably reflect the provision of more substantial stall divisions. These are not evident on the 1901 plan (Fig. 4), suggesting an early twentieth-century date, although this is not conclusive.

Artefacts from the tailor’s shops

The two new rooms resumed their use as tailors’ shops, in which they continued into the twentieth century. Such use accounts for the greater part of the artefactual assemblage in this part of the building: quantities of silver textile, buttons, and other dress fittings. A copper-alloy button, dated to between 1855 and 1928, found its way under the hearth-stone in the northern room. Two more were recovered from a deposit abutting the southern base, one with an iron back, and one stamped ‘Greenwood Cavalry Depot’ and dated between 1850 and 1930. The majority of the assemblage, however, found its way under the floor of the southern room at a later date – perhaps during the demolition of the building – along with a spread of charcoal and smouldering embers.⁴⁵ It included a wide variety of buttons, badges, and fasteners; quantities of patterned silver braid; and some tailoring tools and pins. The buttons were of many different patterns, mostly of copper-alloy, mother-of-pearl, and bone. Those identifying units included one of the Fifth Royal Irish, who are known to have been in Canterbury just after the First World War; two of the 16th (The Queens) Light Dragoons (Lancers), datable between 1855 and 1861; and one of the 3rd Dragoon Guards (Prince of Wales’), datable between 1855 and 1928. There were also three small glass beads, in different shades of blue, and four short lengths of graphite, perhaps from tailor’s pencils. Fragments of mid to late nineteenth-century cartridge cases and lead shot were also found.

acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to the National Archives for allowing them to reproduce parts of TNA: WO 78/3098 as Figs 3 and 4.

bibliography

Bloomfield, P., 1987, Kent and the Napoleonic Wars (Kentish Sources X; Gloucester: Alan Sutton).

Cobbett, W., 1967 (1830), Rural Rides (Harmondsworth: Penguin).

Cozens, Z., 1793, A Tour Through the Isle of Thanet (London: John Nichols).

Douet, J., 1998, British Barracks: 1600-1900 (London: HMSO).

Fazan, E.A.C., 1950, ‘The New Romney Fencible Cavalry (Duke of York’s Own) 1794 to 1800’, Archaeologia Cantiana, lxii, 11-20.

Fazan, E.A.C., 1971, Cinque Ports Battalion (Royal Sussex Regimental Association).

Hasted, E., 1800, History and Topographical Survey of the County of Kent (second edition), XI (Canterbury: William Bristow).

Panton, F.H., 2000, ‘Finances and Government of Canterbury 1700-1850’, Archaeologia Cantiana, cxx, 352-3.

Smith, V., 2004, ‘Defence and Fortifications 1700-1914’, in Lawson, T. and Killingray, D. (eds), An Historical Atlas of Kent, pp. 136-7.

Valpy, N., 1991, ‘Extracts from the Daily Advertiser, 1792-1795’, in English Ceramic Circle Transactions, 14, 228-234.

Whatmore, L.E., 1950, ‘The Founder of Hales Place’, in The Southwark Record, xxiv, 154-7.

endnotes

¹ Kentish Register, November 1795, 427. Taking England as a whole, there had been military barracks in existence for some time chiefly within fortifications or in London. It was the sheer demand for troop accommodation as a balanced response to the matching unprecedented scale of threat that made traditional billeting outside these places impracticable as well as overcoming earlier objections to barracks at places close to or within communities.

² DeLancey’s directorship was somewhat turbulent. In 1796, he was ordered to provide proper accounts, and refused; he was forced to resign in 1804, and a Royal Commission was set up to investigate claims of corruption in the Board.

³ Letter dated December 1823 (TNA: WO 44/547). The network of turnpike roads built linking Canterbury to the coast may well have had some military involvement.

⁴ This track is shown on the Doidges’ Canterbury map of 1752 and on Andrews, Dury and Herbert’s Kent map of 1769. It would soon, with a little modification, provide the Military Road out from Canterbury to the Barracks, as shown on Cole and Roper’s map of 1806.

⁵ Kentish Register, November 1795, 427. As far as the ‘fine water’ is concerned, Canterbury’s monastic water supplies originated in the supervening hillside, and the Christ Church conduit house stood in the field to the south.

⁶ The Hales’ were still, at this time, building their vast mansion, Hales Place, as they had been for at least a quarter of a century. Whatmore (1950, 154) says work on the mansion began in 1758; Greenwood (1838, 356), in 1768. Cozens (1793) had predicted it would, were it ever completed, be ‘more fit for the residence of a monarch than for a simple country gentleman’. The new barracks site lay squarely opposite, across the Stour Valley – did the Hales’ perhaps sell it to meet spiralling costs?

⁷ Kentish Register, November 1795, 427.

⁸ Ibid.; Hasted (1800), vol. 1, p. 120.

⁹ They ran roughly north-east/south-west, but for the purposes of the present article are described as if they ran east-west. They were, indeed, slightly nearer east-west than north-south, and documentary sources (e.g. TNA: WO 78/3098) occasionally name the buildings on this basis. This usage also agrees with the ‘site’ north adopted during the 2008 excavation.

¹⁰ The central building also had full cellarage.

¹¹ The Kentish Register attributes these to one ‘Spencer’. They were doubtless supplied by Spencer and Jones’ ‘artificial-stone manufactory [...] where Gentlemen [might] be served with all sorts of ornaments for buildings, statues, busts, coats of arms, vases, monumental and other figures’ (Daily Advertiser 4 June 1792, cited in Valpy 1991, 231).

¹² Kentish Register, November 1795, 427.

¹³ Smaller cavalry barracks of this period had but a single barrack block, with the officers’ apartments in a kind of ‘house’ at one end.

¹⁴ Kentish Register, November 1795, 427.

¹⁵ By c.1859 (TNA: WO/78/3098), one room in the eastern half of the building, and another, different, room in the eastern barrack block, had sprung timber floors. However, the isolation and asymmetric locations of these floors strongly suggests early nineteenth-century alterations.

¹⁶ A further set of brick pads [G18] was inserted, through the clay, at the head of the stall divisions, at some point in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century (see below).

¹⁷ The total stallage, of 133, is confirmed by a document of 1808 (TNA: MPH 1/739).

¹⁸ There was probably such a structure in every stable.

¹⁹ Again, further sets of posts and pads were inserted during the late nineteenth or early twentieth century (see below).

²⁰ This wall was later truncated below floor level, and replaced with another [S340], on the mid-line of the building (see below).

²¹ Parliamentary Papers (House of Commons) 1861, xvi, General report of the Committee appointed for Improving the Sanitary Condition of the Barracks and Hospitals: 63. Short stretches of this spinal corridor survived the late nineteenth-century reorganization of the first floor, featuring in the 1901 plan (Fig. 3) as short ‘passages’ and ‘stores.’

²² This was the case at the contemporaneous barrack block at Deal South Barracks.

²³ The flues met in a large segmental arch at attic level, to emerge in chimneys at the ridge.

²⁴ TNA: MPH 1/739.

²⁵ These were probably original, although they are neither mentioned in the 1795 Kentish Register, nor shown on the late eighteenth-century Ordnance Survey field drawing.

²⁶ These are first shown on another early nineteenth-century plan, which was briefly available on the internet, but which we have not subsequently been able to locate.

²⁷ Kentish Register, November 1795, 427.

²⁸ Bloomfield 1987, 44; Fazan 1950, 11-20; Fazan 1971, 13-23.

²⁹ Cobbett 1967, 207.

³⁰ Ibid., 207-8. This general impression of decay is corroborated by a description of the neighbouring Artillery Barracks, made in March 1825 (TNA: WO 44/547).

³¹ TNA: WO 78/3098: 6.

³² By 1901, these had been adapted to serve as ‘saddlemakers’ shops’ (TNA: WO 78/3098).

³³ Douet, 1998, 127.

³⁴ Parliamentary Papers (House of Commons) 1855, xvi, Report of the Committee on the Barrack Accommodation for the Army.

³⁵ Parliamentary Papers (House of Commons) 1861, xvi, General report of the Committee appointed for Improving the Sanitary Condition of the Barracks and Hospitals, 19.

³⁶ Parliamentary Papers (House of Commons) 1861, xvi, General report of the Committee appointed for Improving the Sanitary Condition of the Barracks and Hospitals, 63-4.

³⁷ Kentish Gazette, 5 January 1864.

³⁸ TNA: WO 78/3098: 6.

³⁹ Each of the stables – along with the water troughs, urinals, ablution shed, and cook house – seems to have been supplied with a drainage pipe, feeding into this drain. Possibly, the granite-sett paving, here, may also have been new.

⁴⁰ TNA: WO 78/6011.

⁴¹ The Times, 18 November 1891.

⁴² TNA: WORK 43/1595.

⁴³ Several short lengths of the old corridor were retained as passages or store rooms.

⁴⁴ This had happened by 1 October 1897 (Army and Navy Illustrated).

⁴⁵ The underlying clay showed signs of burning, but the artefacts were apparently untouched by fire.

Fig. 1 Site location plan (scale 1:1,000).

Fig. 2 Detail of Ravenhill’s engraving of the Royal Cavalry Barracks, Canterbury, published 1 May 1796, after a drawing by L. Lawrence.

Fig. 3 Plans and sections of the western barrack block, dated 1901 (TNA: WO 78/3098).

Fig. 4 Excavated features compared with ground plan dated 1901 (TNA: WO 78/3098).