Military stations
The Regiment, Saturday 12 November 1898
No. 44. Woolwich.
Woolwich is a Parliamentary borough, a garrison, and a parish in Kent. The town stands on the river Thames, eight miles south-east of London Bridge. It was anciently called Hulviz, Wlewic, Wollewic, and Wulewiche; it belonged in the time of the Confessor to William the Fowler, at Domesday to Haimo the Sheriff, and subsequently passed to Gilbert de Marisco, the Bohuns, the Pulteneys, the Gilbournes, and others. It was only a poor fishing village till the time or Henry VIII., when it became a Royal Dockyard, and was famous for the construction of great ships of war. In 1716 it rose to further importance by the establishment at it of a Royal Arsenal, and became the place of the mother-dock of England and of the only arsenal in England, the others being called gun wharves. Woolwich includes a spacious level plateau called Woolwich Common, used for exercising troops. The Royal Dockyard extended about a mile. It was closed by the Government in 1869, and now used as officers’ quarters and store departments. The Royal Arsenal includes gun factories for building up, boring and drilling pieces of ordnance; a carriage department for making gun carriages, pontoon train, baggage wagons, and ambulances; a laboratory tor making all kinds of ammunition; and a store department of vast extent, containing projectiles for all guns used in the Navy and Army, and a vast amount of entrenching tools, gun carriages, ambulances, saddlery, and other articles for the dual service. A large torpedo factory has been erected and fitted up for the production of this modern implement of naval warfare. The Royal Artillery Barracks stand on the top of the hill, facing the common, present a frontage of nearly a quarter of a mile, contain accommodation for nearly 4,000 men and stabling for 1,000 horses, and include a riding school, a scientific institution, a military hospital, a small observatory, a mortar and howitzer battery for flag-staff practice, a military repository, a garrison chapel, and a museum. The Royal Marine Barracks (now used as an infantry barracks and depot of Ordnance Store Corps) stand un the slope of a hill in the ascent from the dock yard to the common. They are spacious, and well-ventilated, and have accommodation for a battalion. The Naval and Marine Hospital stands on an eminence contiguous to the Marine Barracks, and consists of eight pavilions, connected by a corridor 447 feet long and 13 wide. The Herbert Military Hospital stands on Kidbrook Common. It was completed in 1866, at a cost of about £250.000. and consists of eight pavilions, one of them standing at right angles to the rest, and contains 620 beds for general patients and 28 for prisoners. The Royal Military Academy was built in 1805. There are educated the cadets for the Artillery and Engineers—as a rule, to the number of 200 each course. Amongst the students at the Academy was the late Prince Imperial of France, to whose memory a marble statue has been erected on the Green. A monument was erected in 1882 to the memory of the officers and men of the Royal Artillery who fell in the Zulu and Afghan Wars of 1879 and 1880. Woolwich is a favourite station with Army men, it being so near town. There is plenty of amusement for the men in the way of football, cricket, &c. It may be remembered that Woolwich Arsenal is one of the best football clubs in England. In days of yore there was the famous Woolwich Gardens, where old seasoned cadets and snookers did on the sly congregate. But the fancy “fair” has disappeared. Things are extra lively at Woolwich just now, for on the exertions of those employed in the Arsenal will depend our success if, unfortunately, we are compelled to take up arms against France.
The new “shelter cloak tent” is made in two pieces, and is intended to be carried, when the army is on the march, by the two soldiers who occupy the tent. The halves are so arranged that when the tents arc taken apart each half can be used by a soldier as a waterproof cloak.