Listed Building: FORMER BARRACKS TO REAR OF PORTSMOUTH GRAMMAR SCHOOL (1104363)

Formerly known as: Cambridge Barracks HIGH STREET. Soldiers barracks, now part of school. c1856-58. Red brick with paler brick dressings, ridge stacks and slate hipped roof. Late Georgian style. PLAN: 4 pairs of back-to-back soldiers rooms separated by through passages with stairs, cook house at S end and central office section with through arch. EXTERIOR: 3 storeys. 23-window range. Long plain range with regular rubbed-brick flat arches to 6/6 pane sashes. Central round-arched entrance to vaulted through arch, and doorways in between pairs of former barrack rooms; similar fenestration to rear, SW, elevation, with projecting bays to the through passages opposite the entrances. INTERIOR: fire-proof cook house at the S end has a stair bay against the gable containing a cast-iron stair in curved wall brackets, the lower rooms have heavy cornices and cast-iron T-shaped cross beams. HISTORY: first shown on 1861 OS map, and probably built at the same time as the officer's quarters opposite, 1856-8 for regiments passing through Portsmouth. Of interest for the internal fireproof kitchen, and as part of the former Cambridge barracks with the officer's quarters, now Portsmouth Grammar School, and outbuildings attached to the S (qv). This is part of the only complete barracks that survives in an area just inside the old Portsmouth Lines, which in the C19 contained a large amount of barrack accommodation.