Invicta Park Barracks

Maidstone Barracks: the surviving former officers' quarters (main block), flanked by commanding officer's rooms and the officers' mess.

Permanent barracks were first established in Maidstone as part of the British response to the threat of the French Revolution in around 1798.[1] Maidstone Barracks was a major cavalry barracks at a stationing point between London and the Kent coast (along which several more cavalry barracks were established in the 1790s).[2] The barracks buildings were constructed of timber for speedy assembly, an approach taken at a number of other such establishments around the country hastily built (for both cavalry and infantry) at the start of the French Revolutionary Wars.[3]

Later, in peacetime, Maidstone Barracks served as the cavalry depot, for inducting new recruits.[2] It emerged to become the Army Riding School in 1835.[4]

In 1873 a system of recruiting areas based on counties was instituted under the Cardwell Reforms and the barracks became the depot for the 50th (West Kent) Regiment of Foot and the 97th (The Earl of Ulster's) Regiment of Foot.[5] Following the Childers Reforms, the 50th and 97th regiments amalgamated to form the Queen's Own Royal West Kent Regiment with its depot in the barracks in 1881.[5]

The old barracks began to fall into disrepair and were decommissioned in 1936; although the barracks blocks were demolished in 1991, the Officers’ Mess still survives as the White Rabbit Public House in Sandling Road.[6] Apart from the brick chimneys and slate roof, the building is entirely made of wood, and is the last remaining example of a type of building designed by the Barrack Department in the 1790s to be erected in a hurry, as required to house troops of cavalry or regiments of infantry ready for deployment.[2]

An adjacent site, just a few hundred yards north, was acquired from the Lushington family in 1936 shortly before the outset of the Second World War and a hutted camp known as Invicta Lines (reflecting Invicta, the motto of Kent) was built there.[7] The new barracks became the depot of the Queen's Own Royal West Kent Regiment[8] but were then demoted to the status of out-station to the Home Counties Brigade depot at Howe Barracks in Canterbury in 1959. The Regimental Headquarters of 36 Engineer Regiment have been based at the barracks since 1959.[7] The current barracks were built between 1965 and 1966.[9]

In November 2016 the Ministry of Defence announced that the site would close in 2027.[10]