TM 9924 NW COLCHESTER LE CATEAU ROAD (North West side) Colchester Garrison 584/8/10013 Former Officers' Quarters, Le Cateau Barracks GV II Officers' quarters, now sergeant's mess. c1863. Brick with yellow brick and stone dressings, brick ridge stacks and a slate roof. Single-depth axial plan. EXTERIOR: 2 storeys; 11 window range. Symmetrical front has yellow brick band over the ground-floor windows, yellow brick moulded brick eaves cornice, and taller central gable set forward. Gabled porches on moulded kneelers to round-arched doorways with fanlight and o-panel doors, either side of the central gable and 4 bays form the ends; windows with moulded lintels to 6/6-pane sashes, round-arched first-floor windows to central gable, beneath an oculus. Similar l-ear with 2-storey porches and C20 single-storey service blocks. INTERIOR: not inspected. HISTORY: Le Cateau is the only surviving example of the new layout of cavalry barracks developed at Aldershot in the 1850s, for large-scale training camps. Le Cateau was the first permanent barracks at Colchester camp. Originally at the head of two parallel rows each of three cavalry barracks each side; two survive, blocks A and B (qv). Included as the centrepiece of the original layout, and as part of a group with the rest of the complex. (Dietz P: Garrison: Ten Military Towns: London: 1986-: 3; PSA Drawings Collection, NMR, Swindon: CTR 130-158). Listing NGR: TL9934724540