that in 1904 an architectural branch had been formed at the War Office, under civil control, for new barracks and hospitals at home stations; while services of a minor nature at home, and all services abroad, were carried out as heretofore, under the Royal Engineers. It remains here to show, as a sequel, how the " steady and systematic progress " already indicated, prior to 1904, was continued in the following decade, until, in the period of the great World War, the civil branch ceased to exist. During that decade many new works were carried out, some of them by the new civilian architects, and others by military engineers. Broadly speaking, those carried out under the former adminis- tration were of a substantial and permanent type, while the latter constructed those of a less solid and less ornate character, applicable to the exigencies of locality.
It is necessary, however, first to mention one important development of administration which had reference to this among other subjects affecting the soldier's well-being. In 1906 a Medical Advisory Board was instituted, consisting not only of eminent military medical officers, but also of distinguished medical men in civil life, the very best expert opinion in England on sanitary questions of all sorts. With them was associated an engineer officer of high rank. To this Board was referred all designs for barracks and hospitals at home and in foreign sta- tions other than India, and their authority on all questions affecting housing was necessary before schemes could be sanc- tioned. They selected or approved all sites for dwellings whether for barracks, married men's quarters, or hospitals and they were referred to in all alterations to the Synopsis or Standard Plans. During the war their functions were carried out by an Army Sanitary Committee, which, under the chairmanship of an officer of high rank, made frequent tours in the theatre of war and in all hutted camps, etc., in Great Britain.
Permanent Barracks. The principal permanent British bar- racks (using their term to distinguish the type from those of " light construction ") which were built during the decade 1904-14, were those for one battalion of infantry and one regi- ment of cavalry, near Edinburgh, at Redford.
The plan of the barrack building forms three sides of a quadrangle, and the buildings are three stories high. The ground floors are occupied with recreation and games' rooms on a generous scale, a sergeants' mess, regimental offices and shops, and other accessories, while the upper floors are used for the men's dormitories, and are divided up so that each man has a cubicle to himself. The dining- rooms and cook-houses, etc., occupy the space in the interior of the quadrangle. The whole scheme was on a scale of generosity far beyond anything hitherto constructed. The fact that it was designed with freedom from the restrictions hitherto imposed by standardiza- tion was a potential advantage, for it is only by independent thought that progress can be attained in any appreciable degree in this or any other branch of scientific experiment. But the advantages gained by such treatment of design have to be weighed against the disadvantages, viz: the extra expense for housing even one unit, amounting to about 80% over the last approved type, and the time taken to Duild, which was also proportionally greater. It is also doubtful whether the arrangement of having the dormitories avail- able for night use only as was the intention is as satisfactory from the point of view of military administration as the system, which it had superseded, of having men living together in groups of 10 or 12 with the intimacies and comradeship thus entailed.
At the Redford barracks the officers' quarters are in a separate block, together with the men's the whole forming a handsome building, and the married men's quarters are also separate.
Light-Construction Barracks. About 1906-7 proposals were made to the Army Council of a somewhat novel principle in constructional work. Hitherto it had been always accepted as an axiom in military buildings that the more substantial and permanent the construction, the better, on the ground that although the first cost might be greater than that of a temporary building, such as a wooden hut, the cost of repairs for the latter worked out at so much higher a figure and the life of the building was so much shorter, that it was true economy in the end to build as solidly as possible. The cost of repairs in a solid well- built barrack might be between 0-75 and 1-25% of the capital value, but that of huts might run to 3 or 4 %. It was pointed out in 1907, however, that this was a fallacious argument to apply to buildings which were required for a service subject both to
frequent changes of policy and to changes of standard imposed by progress in science. Thus the Royal barracks in Dublin, which in the reign of Queen Anne were considered the finest in Europe, were in the reign of Queen Victoria still standing, solid and substantial, but the despair of every sanitary expert. The same applies to many barracks (and, it may be added, to many civil hospitals) in many parts of the British Empire. It was argued, therefore, that constructional science had now reached a- point where it was possible to build in a manner much less ex- pensive, much more rapidly erected, and much more easily altered than the solid walls and heavy roofs of our fathers, and that such buildings, not much more expensive than tempo- rary huts, could be made to suit military needs; and that the cost of maintenance would be no greater than that entailed in the case of more substantial works. Any one acquainted with the routine of military administration is familiar with the constant " reappropriations " that have to be made to suit some change in the requirements of accommodation. A row of married men's quarters has to be turned into a temporary, or even permanent, hospital, or a forage barn has to be made into a school, a gun-shed into a recreation room. With solid old masonry this became a serious and expensive matter. The whole subject required reconsideration.
Just then an opportunity occurred of making the experiment on a fairly wide scale. In the earthquake at Kingston, Jamaica, civil and military houses alike were shattered in a few seconds. The barracks, for about 800 men, with church, hospital and all administrative offices and staff quarters, had been of the old solid type. They were gone, and had to be replaced at once. Urgent representations to England pointed out that remedial measures must be instant, that there was neither material nor labour available locally, and that new plans should be proof against earthquakes and hurricanes.
It was decided at once to build the new barracks with a skeleton steel framework, vertical steel stanchions, braced below by steel horizontal joists, and above by a composite steel and wooden truss. The stanchions were rooted, as it were, by a broad flat plate, in a concrete block in the ground, and they were calculated to carry the whole weight of floors, walls, roof and any other contingent matters such as windows, doors, shelves, etc. The walls, which carried no weight, but were merely screens from weather, were composed of a double panelling of metal lathing plastered over and fastened to the steel stanchions. Being double, the space between the two sets of panels acted as a non-conductor of temperature. The whole of the work was quickly designed and the material quickly prepared. A firm of English contractors erected the skeleton of each building on their own premises, marked every part on a key plan, and the whole was dispatched from Bristol under charge of an experienced foreman of works, while a company of R. E. under a selected officer had meantime been dispatched, soon after the disaster, to erect the first building and arrange preliminaries for the others.
Figs. 1,2,3 and 4 show the plans and section of the main barracks
buildings. The roof has a steep slope, partly to throw off tropical
rain quickly, partly to allow locally obtained wooden shingles to be
used as a fairly cool covering. The floor is raised 4 ft. above the
ground, with a clear space beneath, the whole area below being cov-
ered with a seal of concrete to prevent exhalations from the soil. In
this design the saving in walls and foundations is obvious, while the
advantage in respect of stability, arising from the strength and
continuity of the steel and its attachment to the foundation blocks,
is also evident. As a matter of fact, there was another earthquake
