History
The barracks was originally built in the 1860s to house two battalions of troops. The original Victorian buildings were a long and monotonous brick structure broken by towers in the centre. These buildings were replaced by two 13-storey concrete tower blocks in the 1960s. The tower blocks were used to accommodate four companies from the Guards Regiments.
A nail-bomb attack on the barracks by the Provisional Irish Republican Army in September 1981 killed two civilians.
Read more about this topic: Chelsea Barracks
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of reform is always identical; it is the comparison of the idea with the fact. Our modes of living are not agreeable to our imagination. We suspect they are unworthy. We arraign our daily employments.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“... in America ... children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)
“Certainly there is not the fight recorded in Concord history, at least, if in the history of America, that will bear a moment’s comparison with this, whether for the numbers engaged in it, or for the patriotism and heroism displayed.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)