Gibraltar Barracks is a British Army installation at
Minley in
Hampshire
Hampshire (, ; abbreviated to Hants.) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Berkshire to the north, Surrey and West Sussex to the east, the Isle of Wight across the Solent to the south, ...
.
History
The
Royal Engineers
The Corps of Royal Engineers, usually called the Royal Engineers (RE), and commonly known as the ''Sappers'', is the engineering arm of the British Army. It provides military engineering and other technical support to the British Armed Forces ...
first arrived at Minley with an engineer brigade in the early 1970s. The corps occupied
Minley Manor and initially used it as their brigade headquarters.
The Queen visited the site to initiate works on modern military facilities on the opposite side of the A327 Minley Road in October 1976. The new facilities were officially opened as Gibraltar Barracks by General
Sir William Jackson in September 1979, the manor going on to serve as its
officers' mess
The mess (also called a mess deck aboard ships) is a designated area where military personnel socialize, eat and (in some cases) live. The term is also used to indicate the groups of military personnel who belong to separate messes, such as the o ...
.
Between 2008 and 2013, as part of the RSME-
PPP project, the Holdfast consortium redeveloped the barracks and built a new officers' mess on the site so allowing the manor to be sold.
Headquarters,
8th Engineer Brigade moved to Gibraltar Barracks in 2014.
In 2021, the corps headquarters of the
Royal Corps of Army Music moved from
Kneller Hall in
Twickenham
Twickenham ( ) is a suburban district of London, England, on the River Thames southwest of Charing Cross. Historic counties of England, Historically in Middlesex, since 1965 it has formed part of the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames, who ...
to Gibraltar Barracks.
[British Army, ''Soldier Magazine: August 2021'', p. 11]
Current units
The units currently based at the barracks are:
* Headquarters,
Royal Corps of Army Music (since August 2021)
*Headquarters,
8th Engineer Brigade
*
Royal School of Military Engineering Group (Headquarters in
Chatham,
Kent
Kent is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Essex across the Thames Estuary to the north, the Strait of Dover to the south-east, East Sussex to the south-west, Surrey to the west, and Gr ...
)
** 3 Royal School of Military Engineering (3 RSME) Regiment
*** Combat Engineer School
* Mine Information and Training Centre
* Royal Engineers Trials and Development Unit
* Royal Engineers Warfare Wing
Footnotes
References
* {{Cite book, last1=Watson, first1=Graham E., title=The Corps of Royal Engineers: Organisation and Units 1889–2018, last2=Rinaldi, first2=Richard A., publisher=Tiger Lilly Books, year=2018, isbn=978-1717901804
Installations of the British Army
Barracks in England