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Description: Keep at former Wellesley Barracks

Address: The Keep Wellesley Park Gibbet Street Halifax West Yorkshire HX2 0BA

Grade: II

Group detail: Gibbet Street (north off)

Full description:
Armoury, guard house and store, disused. 1875. Designed by Royal Engineer's architect. Coursed and dressed stone with ashlar dressings. Lateral stacks and asphalt roof. Castellated Gothic Revival style. PLAN: square, with ground-floor guard room and detention cells, corner stairs, stores on upper floors. EXTERIOR: 3 storey, 3 window range. A regular, square block with opposite square stair towers rising above the roof. other 2 corners chamfered with raised parapets, with ashlar cill and lintel bands, dentil eaves and crenellated parapet. Battered ground-floor to a weathered band, narrow metal-framed windows with stone lintels, stepped in threes to the stair tower. INTERIOR: not inspected, but noted as having a fire-proof construction of iron columns to jack arches and stone open well stairs, and a standard plan with guard house, cells and various stores. HISTORY: the keep was a secure armoury, store guard house and lock-up, the characteristic building of the local depot. The building formed part of the Cardwell reforms, which redistributed barracks around the country to encourage local connections, and assist recruitment. As such, the keep raised the local profile of the barracks, and provided an emblematic focus for the regiment. Only ten examples survive, including at Brock, Bodmin (qv) and Reading (qv).