Somerset Barracks replaced in brick what had been 'E' range of the mid-C19 wooden-hutted Shorncliffe Camp. The majority of Somerset Barracks sat north of the perimeter road (North Road), on an area that is now housing. This included all the accommodation buildings and the associated communal blocks, with the officers’ mess and amenity buildings to the south of the perimeter road. The amenity buildings included a school, schoolmaster’s house, ball court, and quartermasters’ accommodation. Subsequently, the corrugated iron hall was added (before 1907) and the Sir John Moore Memorial Hall and Library in 1916.

Despite the slight ecclesiastical look of the hall, given its pointed windows and the traceried east window, the building is marked on historic maps as a hall, and there is no known evidence to suggest it was ever used as a church. The construction in 1915-16 of the Sir John Moore Memorial Hall and Library to its immediate south hints that the latter might in part have been a successor to the former. Whether or not this is the case, the present day survival of the corrugated iron hall indicates it continued to fulfil a useful function even after the construction of the adjacent hall and library. The nature of the building's construction points strongly toward it having been a 'kit' building of the type which was available to purchase from catalogues from the mid-C19 onwards.

Details
Corrugated iron hall, c1900.
MATERIALS: the building has a timber frame on a rendered brick plinth. The exterior is clad in green-painted corrugated-iron sheet, and the interior is clad in white-painted timber boarding. The windows are timber casements and the roof has tensioned steel-rod trusses.
PLAN: the main building is rectangular in plan, with a pitched roof and an enclosed entrance porch to the west. To the north is an irregular accretion of later extensions and out-shuts which contain a kitchen, WC, store and large subsidiary room. To the east, is a secondary ramped access to the hall.
EXTERIOR: the building is very modest in character, with architectural detail limited to the use of pointed arches on the windows to the west and south, the simple traceried east window, and the modestly decorative barge boards on the east gable end.
INTERIOR: the main hall is a single open space, with no features of note. (1)

<1> English Heritage, 2013, English Heritage (Listing) Advice Report for Corrugated Iron Hall (Unpublished document). SKE25230.