It’s ironic our word ‘barrack’ has French origins (from ‘baraque’, meaning a soldier’s tent) as the barracks that emerged in Christchurch (now in Dorset but in Hampshire before 1974) in the final decade of the 18th century was established with the sole purpose of dealing with French invaders. This was the Revolutionary and Napoleonic era and the threat to national security was not an idle one. Housing cavalry and horse artillery, this community of almost 200 people and 150 horses certainly made an impact, socially and economically, on the local area.

Prior to 1792 there were few purpose-built barracks in Britain as maintaining a large standing army, especially in peacetime, was considered an anathema in a parliamentary democracy, especially when it would be funded through taxation. Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger was vexed by two potential threats: the real and present danger of French invasion and the growing menace of social unrest. The problem was who would deal with either or both. The Barrack Department of Great Britain was duly set up, which responded by erecting over 200 barracks capable of accommodating 1,700 cavalry and around 150,000 infantry.

Land for Christchurch Barracks was purchased on 21 October 1794 with the Report of the Military Enquiry into the Barrack Department confirming the Barracks were built from 1795, occupying a site of some 4½ acres and costing £9,616, the work continuing until late 1798 or early 1799. Among the original buildings was a stable/barrack block, which housed horses on the ground floor with officers and men on the first floor. This block formed one end of the barrack square (or rectangle) which acted as a parade ground. Innovation was to hand. The columns separating the stable stalls were some of the earliest examples of the structural use of cast iron. The stables had cobbled floors and a central drainage gully until after WW2 when the floors were concreted and the cobbles reused for edging flower beds.

The barracks was occupied by civilian and military personnel, the most important civilian being the barrack master, akin to an early civil servant. For most of the 19th century this influential figure and his family resided in a single-storey building in the complex’s south-east corner. We know the names of some of these barrack masters, the first the splendidly named Meshach Pike, who reigned from 1798 to c.1807. Meshach and his successors were responsible for buying up stores and selling surpluses so were well known around the town. Another important fellow was the canteen keeper (or ‘sutler’) although the first recorded instance of one residing at the barracks was in 1861, one George French. His predecessors must have lived in the town. The Barracks was a source of income and expenditure for the town with contracts issued for work on the Barracks which was funded by selling dung and renting out grass in the barrack yard. Also, gun horses were hired out (unofficially) to assist farmers with ploughing.

An extension of the barracks occurred between 1810 and 1812. One of the additions was the guardhouse, which still fronts Barrack Road and has found a prosaic use as a hairdresser’s. Buildings continued to sprout including new officers’ quarters and married quarters; however, the barracks remained largely unaltered until WW1 when some temporary buildings emerged on the Barrack Square and beyond the perimeter wall. Socially the barracks did not exist separately from the town. There were priory weddings, cricket and football matches against local clubs, performances by the RA Dramatic Club, quadrille parties, artillerymen helping to extinguish house fires and rescue stricken boating parties on the Stour, with the barracks used as a refuge for the homeless following the great Bargates fire of 1825 (Bargates being another main thoroughfare into Christchurch).

Although the barracks was built with cavalry in mind, for most of the 19th century (and right up to 1939) its principal occupants were actually the Royal Horse Artillery (RHA) and Royal Artillery (RA) The first recorded visit of the RHA to Christchurch Barracks was in 1797, around halfway through its initial build, when ‘F’ Troop rocked up, commanded by Capt. J.E. Butler. Another barracks duty, certainly in its early days, was to assist with anti-smuggling work; for example in 1803, when Capt. Frederick Griffiths and ‘C’ Troop, RHA accompanied the local riding officer on patrols of the coast. Griffiths would become director of the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst.

Of all the personnel associated with the barracks, however, the most esteemed was Sir Augustus Simon Frazer (1776–1835), who commanded ‘G’ Troop, RHA stationed at Christchurch in 1806. In 1813 the Duke of Wellington made Frazer overall commander of the RHA in the Peninsular War, then trusted him with command of the Horse Artillery at Waterloo. Gen. John Dupuis was also stationed at the Barracks, commanding ‘D’ Troop. He saw action in the Crimean War and Indian Rebellion. Casualties were not always inflicted in war zones. A brass plate in Christchurch Priory records the fate of Driver Hobbs and other members of ‘G’ Battery, RHA based at the barracks 1878–81. Hobbs died in the Brecon Beacons where the artillery ranges were located – a training accident. The barracks had been extended again just before this, between 1875 and 1877. St Catherine’s Hill, Christchurch’s high point, was used by the RHA to train horses and drivers in the dangerous work of pulling field guns across country. During WW1 the hill featured again with trenches dug to prepare men for Flanders Fields.

It was between the wars that Christchurch began a westward sprawl which left the barracks no longer isolated from its community. The barracks itself would soon be expanding to house the Experimental Bridging Establishment, which arguably bestowed the barracks’ finest hour as cavalry and RHA gave way to Royal Engineers (RE) This began in 1918 when Major Martel was appointed to command the Experimental Bridging Company of the RE formed at Christchurch. During WW2 Donald Bailey was based here, his eponymous ‘Bailey Bridge’ developed there, the Meccano-like structure popularly held to have shortened the war. There were pontoon Baileys across the Stour adjacent to the establishment where the weight of tanks and transporters was tested. There are Bailey relics around the town: a section of bridge and plaque on Barrack Road opposite the Bailey Bridge pub/restaurant; a prototype pedestrian Bailey on Stanpit Marsh; a section of Bailey on a wall of the Red House Museum; and a plaque/memorial inside the priory. Apparently, if all the panels produced during WW2 were laid end to end they’d stretch from Christchurch to St Petersburg. There was a lot of ‘hush hush’ stuff at the barracks with experimental demolition and tunnelling establishments also there. For a brief while after Dunkirk Montgomery had his HQ close by at Shortwood House, Magdalen Lane, at one end of the Barrack Road Recreation Ground.

The last manifestation of the barracks was the MVEE (Military Vehicles Experimental Establishment) which closed in 1994, exactly two centuries after the land was purchased for the barracks. A few years later, in 1997, the one-time military site had found a new use as a mix of retail park and housing estate. Pleasingly, some relics of the former barracks survive, including the former officers’ quarters, the barrack/stable block and the guardhouse. {

References
Christchurch Barracks (J. Barker, 1993)
Prepared for Battle (M.A. Hodges, 1978)
Christchurch (S. Newman, 1998) – ‘Images of England’ series.
Christchurch Through Time (S. Newman, 2009)
Christchurch – a photographic history of your town (M.A. Hodges, 2001)
St Catherine’s Hill – A Short History (M.A. Hodges, 2005)
Christchurch a Brief History (M.A. Hodges, 2008)
Christchurch – The Golden Years (M.A. Hodges, 2003)