In for a Barracking

We didn’t know about this until Steve Bird pointed it out to us. We’ve written before about Wilfred Owen and the hutments at Rossall Point – about how in 1859 Fleetwood became an army town and how the squaddies were accused of trampling down fences and destroying farm property. What we didn’t realise was that part of the original barracks is still standing.
Take a look at this:


This is one of two remaining walls belonging to the aforementioned barracks down a back alley running parallel to Beach Road. It might not be very attractive, perhaps, but it is historically interesting, especially when you stop to consider that at the start of the First World War it was actually occupied by this lot:


We were quite impressed by the size of the wall. The barracks never looked that large on the map. Whether Wilfred Owen ever wandered around inside the enclosure or not, we couldn’t say for certain (we suspect he did) because he lived officially down Bold Street (and for a short time on Lord Street as well).
Whatever the case, here’s the first edition Ordnance Survey map showing exactly how large (and complicated) the barracks were.


Here’s another shot of the wall.


High, isn’t it? And heavily defended! Those are gun slots up near the top. They get narrower towards the outside, allowing maximum room for manoeuvre by the riflemen behind them (who, presumably, had some sort of gantry to stand on…unless they were just extremely tall) and minimum chance for any stray enemy bullets to get through.
Oddly enough, the walls appear to have been built, or rather rebuilt, several times. The lower bricks are mainly pre-frogged affairs placing them, if memory serves, in the early Victorian period. Higher up there are your traditional frogged and hard-baked Victorian bricks, whilst at the top a layer consistent with World War II defences seems to have been added. We’re not sure about the entire life history of the barracks, when it demolished and why etc. so we’re just going off what we could actually see.
Round the corner on Beach Road there’s another relic from Fleetwood’s military past, denoting the corner of the barracks themselves.


That’s a War Department stone, that is. There’s another one in the front wall of the North Euston Hotel if anyone fancies a look. You might be able to make out W.D. No. 2 carved into this one, and what appears to be a benchmark. It isn’t a benchmark. It’s the War Department logo. It looks like a benchmark because, well, benchmarks were established by the Ordnance Survey mob, who basically worked for the War Department surveying Britain’s ordnance…er…obviously.
Anyhow, there you go…worth a quick gander if you’re into that sort of stuff.
One last photograph, showing another section of the remaining walls, this time over a hollow section of ground where the foundations to keep it level, as can be seen, were rather large. It’s surprising what’s still left around Fleetwood that we thought had long since gone.