Barracks
Barracks are buildings used to accommodate military personnel. The English word originates from the 17th century via French and Italian from an old Spanish word barraca 'soldier's tent',[1] but today barracks are usually permanent buildings. The word may apply to separate housing blocks or to complete complexes, and the plural form often refers to a single structure and may be singular in construction.
The main objective of barracks is to separate soldiers from the civilian population and reinforce discipline, training, and esprit de corps. They have been called "discipline factories for soldiers".
History
Early barracks such as those of the Roman
Early barracks were multi-story blocks, often grouped in a quadrangle around a
The first large-scale training camps were built in the Kingdom of France and the Germany during the early 18th century. The British Army built Aldershot camps from 1854.
By the First World War,
These were inadequate for the enormous armies mobilized after 1914. Hut camps were developed using variations of the eponymous Nissen hut, made from timber or corrugated iron.
Military
In many military forces, both NCO and SNCO personnel will frequently be housed in barracks for service or training. Officers are often charged with ensuring the barracks and personnel are maintained in an orderly fashion. Junior enlisted and sometimes junior NCOs will often receive less space and may be housed in bays, while senior NCOs and officers may share or have their own room. Junior enlisted personnel are typically tasked with the cleanliness of the barracks. The term "Garrison town" is a common expression for any town that has military barracks, i.e., a permanent military presence nearby.
Prison
Prison cell blocks often are built and arranged like barracks, and some military prisons may have barracks in their name, such as the United States Disciplinary Barracks of Leavenworth.
Worldwide
The examples and perspective in this article deal primarily with the United Kingdom and do not represent a worldwide view of the subject. (December 2009) |
Canada
Barracks were used to house troops in forts during the Upper Canadian period. Leading up to and during the War of 1812, Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe and Major-General Isaac Brock oversaw the construction of Fort York on the shores of Lake Ontario in present-day Toronto.[6] There are several surviving British Army barracks built between 1814 and 1815 at that site today. Multiple limestone barracks were built half a mile west of Fort York in 1840, only one of which survives. The British Army handed over "New Fort York", as the second fort was called, to the Canadian Militia in 1870 after Confederation.[7]
The Stone Frigate, completed in 1820, served as barracks briefly in 1837–38, and was refitted as a dormitory and classrooms to house the Royal Military College of Canada by 1876. The Stone frigate is a large stone building originally designed to hold gear and rigging from British warships dismantled to comply with the Rush–Bagot Treaty.
Poland
In Poland barracks are represented usually as a complex of buildings, each consisting of a separate entity or an administrative or business premises. As an example, the Barracks Complex in Września.
Portugal
Each of the Portuguese Army bases is referred as a quartel (barracks). In a barracks, each of the dormitory buildings is referred as a caserna (casern). Most of them are regimental barracks, constituting the fixed component of the Army system of forces and being responsible for the training, sustenance and general support to the Army. In addition to the regimental administrative, logistic and training bodies, each barracks can lodge one or more operational units (operational battalions, independent companies or equivalent units). Although there are housing blocks within the perimeter of some regimental barracks, the Portuguese usual practice is for the members of the Armed Forces to live outside the military bases with their families, inserted in the local civilian communities.
Many of the Portuguese regimental barracks are of a model developed by the old Administrative Commission for the New Infrastructures of the Armed Forces (CANIFA). Because of this, they are commonly referred as "CANIFA type barracks". These types of barracks were built in the 1950s and 1960s, following a standardized architectural model, usually with an area of between 100,000 and 200,000 square metres, including a headquarters building, a guard house, a general mess building, an infirmary building, a workshop and garage building, an officer house building, a sergeant house building, three to ten rank and file caserns, fire ranges and sports facilities. In average each CANIFA type barracks was intended to lodge around 1000 soldiers and their respective armament, vehicles and other equipment.
Russia
Until the end of the 18th century personnel of the Imperial Russian Army were billeted with civilians homes or accommodated in slobodas in a countryside. First barracks were built during the reign of Emperor Paul I.[8] For these purposes, Paul I established a one-time land tax based on the amount of land owned by citizen. This tax was not mandatory, but person who paid it was permanently exempted from billets.[9]
He considered as unquestionably harmful for the combat development of the soldier not only a constant participation in the home life of civilians, caused by the billet system, — Paul believed that even an accommodation in the slobodas, which did not cut soldier off from a household concerns and chores, is unsuited to the formation of a proper combat army. Emperor Paul understood that the organization of military accommodations has its own task not only to provide a soldier with a house, but also to adapt him to the purpose and conditions of life of the soldier. Only a barracks cohabitation, concentrated in more or less significant masses, seemed to Paul the only purposeful approach for the development and maintenance of the military spirit and discipline, for the study of the soldier's personality and qualities, for the convenience of training and military exercises. Barrack is not only the home of a soldier, but also the school where he is brought up. This idea was fully grasped by Paul, and the construction of barracks for the army everywhere became his main objective, to the achievement of which he put all his strength, all his energy.
— Nikolay Lyapidevsky, History of barracks accommodation of troops in Russia (Engineering journal, 1882)[10]
From the end of 1882, the money collected for exemption from billet was transferred to the military ministry. This has made it possible to step up the construction of barracks for the army. By 1 January 1900, 19,015 barracks had been built, which accommodated 94% of the troops.[11]
United Kingdom
In the 17th and 18th centuries there were concerns around the idea of a standing army housed in barracks; instead, the law provided for troops routinely to be billeted in small groups in inns and other locations.[12] (The concerns were various: political, ideological and constitutional, provoked by memories of Cromwell's New Model Army and of the use of troops in reign of James II to intimidate areas of civil society. Furthermore, grand urban barracks were associated with absolutist monarchies, where they could be seen as emblematic of power sustained through military might; and there was an ongoing suspicion that gathering soldiers together in barracks might encourage sedition.)[5]
Nevertheless, some "soldiers' lodgings" were built in Britain at this time, usually attached to coastal fortifications or royal palaces. The first recorded use of the word 'barracks' in this context was for the Irish Barracks, built in the precinct of the
In England, this domestic style continued to be used through the first half of the eighteenth century; most new barracks of this period were more or less hidden within the precincts of medieval castles and
In the aftermath of the
It was not until some years after the end of the
A review conducted following the demise of the Board of Ordnance in 1855 noted that only seven barracks outside London had accommodation for more than 1,000.[12] This changed with the establishment of large-scale Army Camps such as Aldershot (1854), and the expansion of Garrison towns such as Colchester; over time in these locations temporary huts were replaced with more permanent barracks buildings. Large-scale camps were not the only way forward, however; from the 1870s, the localisation agenda of the Cardwell Reforms saw new and old barracks established as depots for regional or County brigades and regiments. The latter part of the 19th century also saw the establishment of a number of Naval barracks (an innovation long resisted by the Royal Navy, which had tended to accommodate its sailors afloat either on their ships or else in hulks moored in its harbours). The first of these, Keyham Barracks in Devonport (later HMS Drake), was begun in 1879, and only completed in 1907.
During the 20th century, activity ranged from the need for speedy expansion during the First World War (when large camps such as Catterick were established), to the closure of many barracks in the interwar period. Many of those that remained were rebuilt in the 1960s, either substantially (as happened at Woolwich, behind the facade) or entirely (as at Hyde Park and at Chelsea - built 1863, demolished and rebuilt 1963, closed 2008). There has been an ongoing focus on improving the quality of barracks accommodation; since the 1970s several former RAF bases have been converted to serve as Army barracks, in place of some of the more cramped urban sites. Today, generally, only single and unmarried personnel or those who choose not to move their families nearby live in barracks. Most British military barracks are named after battles, military figures or the locality.
United States
In basic training, and sometimes follow-on training, service members live in barracks. Formerly, the
After training, unmarried junior enlisted members will typically reside in barracks. During unaccompanied, dependent-restricted assignments, non-commissioned and commissioned officer ranks may also be required to live in barracks. Amenities in these barracks increase with the rank of the occupant.
Unlike the other services, the U.S. Air Force officially uses the term "dormitory" to refer to its unaccompanied housing.
During World War II, many U.S. barracks were made of inexpensive, sturdy and easy to assemble
See also
- Cantonment, a temporary or semi-permanent military quarters.
- B hut
- Barkas, Hyderabad
Notes
- ^ Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd. ed. barrack, n.1
- ^ Black, Jeremy, A Military Revolution?: Military Change and European Society, 1550-1800 (London, 1991)
- ^ Douet, James, British Barracks, their social and architectural importance, 1660-1914 (London, 1997)
- ^ Roberts, Michael The Military Revolution, 1660-1760 (Belfast, 1856); reprinted with some amendments in Rogers, Clifford, ed., The Military Revolution Debate Rogers, Clifford, ed., The Military Revolution Debate: Readings on the Military Transformation of Early Modern Europe (Boulder, 1895)
- ^ a b c d e Douet, James (1997). British Barracks, 1660-1914. English Heritage.
- ^ Dr. Carl Benn, Department of History Chair, Ryerson University. "A Brief History of Fort York". www.fortyork.ca. The Friends of Fort York and Garrison Common. Retrieved April 13, 2021.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - ISBN 9781554887880.
- ISBN 978-5-9524-2608-5.
- ISBN 978-5-9524-2608-5.
- ^ Lyapidevsky, Nikolay (1882). "История казарменного помещения войск в России". Инженерный журнал (in Russian) (3): 318–319.
- S2CID 233620729.
- ^ a b c May, Trevor (2002). Military Barracks. Shire Books.
- ^ "Deaths". Saunders's News-Letter. 14 November 1774. p. 1.
References
- Black, Jeremy, A Military Revolution?: Military Change and European Society, 1550-1800 (London, 1991)
- Dallemagne, François, Les casernes françaises, (1990)
- Douet, James, British Barracks, their social and architectural importance, 1660-1914 (London, 1997)
- Roberts, Michael The Military Revolution, 1560-1660 (Belfast, 1956); reprinted with some amendments in Rogers, Clifford, ed., The Military Revolution Debate Rogers, Clifford, ed., The Military Revolution Debate: Readings on the Military Transformation of Early Modern Europe (Boulder, 1995)
- 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica
External links
- Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 3 (11th ed.). 1911. .
- Royal Engineers Museum Military Works (Barrack construction)