Details
SU86SE
674-1/18/302
SANDHURST
LONDON ROAD (north west side)
New Building, Royal Military Academy
08/07/98
GV
II
Officers' training college, mess and barracks. 1911-18, by HB Measures, Director of Barrack Construction.
MATERIALS: Bath stone ashlar and brick with stone dressings, brick axial stacks with cornices and slate hipped roof.
PLAN: axial plan of outer H-shaped cadet's blocks angled forward and linked by passages to central single depth officers' mess with rear canteen.
STYLE: Edwardian Baroque style.
EXTERIOR: left-hand three storey, 6:22:7-window range, central two storey, seven-window range with four stage tower, and right-hand three storey, 7:22:6-window range, connected by single storey, seven-window corridors. Very long and strongly articulated group, with banded ashlar ground floor, mullion and transom metal framed windows, and 6/6 pane sashes. Central block has central tower with semi-circular distyle in antis Tuscan porch with half-domed roof to double half-glazed doors, first floor round arched window with Tuscan columns to impost band, all within two storey aedicule with paired first floor Ionic columns, on full-height ground floor plinth, to modillion pediment containing royal coat of arms, top section has trophy bases to octagonal clasping buttresses, modillion cornice forming segmental pediment over clock within ashlar panel, and hexagonal dome and flagpole with arched buttresses to corner octagonal pinacles, with swan's neck pediment to niche on Ionic columns. Flanking sections have giant pilaster strips to balustrade with pedimented dies and outer finials, segmental arched ground floor and round-arched first floor three-light windows, with shallow curved balconies with turned balusters and bracket from the key beneath.
Outer blocks have round-arched ground floor mullion windows, flat headed upper 6/6-pane sashes with architraves, and cornices on first floor. Projecting outer wings divided into three by pilaster strips to modillion cornice and pedimented three-bay centre with keyed oculus, and open pediments over three middle first floor windows, middle entrance range has similar pedimented central section with open ground floor arches and central first floor pedimented niche, and end three-window sections set forward with clasping pilaster strips. Central and outer end pedimented sections have one window to outer side and two windows to inner side of pediment, as perspective effect. Ashlar linking corridors have central entrances with bracketed segmental arched canopies to double doors, and keyed lunettes to outer bays separated by pilaster strips. End returns have banded ashlar ground floor above a brick basement, and projecting end and central pedimented sections. Plain brick rear. Canteen has six rear gables and gabled ends, with wide lunette mullion windows.
INTERIOR: main sections have coloured tiled wainscotting, officers' mess has two storey entrance stair hall with brown tiling and an open well stair with turned balusters and newel which rises across the entrance, left-hand dining room and right-hand drawing room, and rear canteen with red tiles and Ionic columns to barrel vaulted roof. Plain cadets accommodation.
HISTORY: part of the early C20 expansion of the Academy, with similarly styled gym (qv). A striking and richly decorated composition, in which great size of buildings handled with considerable skill. One of the most important manifestations of the British army at the height of its imperial dominion.
