Gun Park Block, Royal Artillery Barracks
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| Gun Park Block | |
|---|---|
 Interactive map of the Gun Park Block area | |
| General information | |
| Architectural style | Georgian |
| Location | Repository Road, Woolwich, London SE18 |
| Coordinates | 51°29′02″N 0°03′11″E / 51.484°N 0.053°E |
| Construction started | Early 19th century |
The Gun Park Block is a Grade II listed building on Repository Road in Woolwich, in the Royal Borough of Greenwich, south-east London. It is an early 19th-century military building within the curtilage of the Royal Artillery Barracks, situated at the edge of the former Gun Park drill ground on Woolwich Common.
The building is a single-storey, five-bay structure in multicoloured stock brick with a brick plinth. The three centre bays project slightly beneath a pediment with a stone cornice above brick dentils. In the tympanum is a round window with wood louvres and a gauged brick surround. The roof is low-pitched, hipped and slated, with brick dentil cornices at the eaves continuing across the front below the pediment.[1]
The windows are round-headed, set in round-arched recesses with a stone impost band, all with gauged brick arches. They contain sash windows with glazing bars, radial in the heads. The entrance has an arched door opening with a double door beneath a cornice head, and a radial fanlight with outer margin lights. At either side is a lower, single-storey, three-window wing.[1]
Setting
The Gun Park Block stands on the west side of Repository Road, at the edge of the former Gun Park, a drill ground for field-battery exercises laid out alongside the parade ground of the Royal Artillery Barracks.[2] To the west lie the former Repository Grounds, where the Royal Military Repository relocated from the Warren in 1802 to establish an artillery training landscape.[3] The Rotunda, a Grade II* listed structure designed by John Nash, was resited from Carlton House to the eastern edge of the Repository Grounds in 1818–20.[3]
Listing and future
The building was listed at Grade II on 8 June 1973.[1] It lies within the Woolwich Common Conservation Area.
The Royal Artillery departed Woolwich in 2007, with the Regiment's headquarters moving to Larkhill.[3] In November 2016 the Ministry of Defence announced that the barracks site would close in 2028.[4] A supplementary planning document for the barracks site, prepared by the Royal Borough of Greenwich and the Defence Infrastructure Organisation, identified the Gun Park Block as a heritage asset that should be refurbished for active use and treated as a visual focal point framed by new development.[4]