Bury St Edmunds housing development was once the site of Yeomanry brigade depot

Yeomanry were volunteer cavalry units, first raised for home defence in 1794 in readiness for the Napoleonic wars.

The term ‘Yeoman’ originally meant a moderately prosperous independent farmer. Though many of these regiments were disbanded after Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo in 1815, the later 1853 Militia Act required each county to provide NCO accommodation and an armoury.

Here in Bury St Edmunds, a brigade depot for the West Suffolk Militia Regiment under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel James Meade Hamilton was built in Cemetery Road, today’s Kings Road, on a two-and-a-half acre site, costing in excess of £10,000.

Richard Makilwaine Phipson (1827-1884), a notable Ipswich architect, was employed. The date of its construction, 1857, can be seen on a drainpipe.

His build of dark red bricks with blue headers and with lighter red brick dressings, narrow windows with stone sills is of an unusual design which has been said to be ‘Elizabethan’. It consisted of a powder magazine and an armoury capable of storing 1,000 stand of arms, (a complete set of weapons for one soldier).

There were guardrooms and orderly rooms, a surgery, storerooms and prisoner’s cells etc. Most importantly there was a parade ground, drilling an important component of military life.

Accommodation consisted of quarters for staff sergeants and a residence for the adjutant, but it has to be remembered that the 190 privates and officers were not billeted here on a regular basis, though they had to muster every year for eight days training.

As you would also expect, the great and the good of the Bury area were much to the fore of the militia: the Marquis of Bristol the Hon Colonel, Fuller Maitland Wilson Esq of Stowlangtoft Hall the Lieut-Colonel, Captain Charles Tufnell Oakes, Adjutant (Oakes banking dynasty of Bury), Dr John Kilner FRCS and John Simmonds the Quartermaster.

The 5th Territorial Battalion of the Suffolk Regiment was stationed here in 1874. Yeomanry regiments became the Territorial Force in 1908 and fought as cavalry regiments during World War One, especially in Palestine, they would eventually become the Territorial Army.

There was a major re-organisation of the Territorial Army in 1967 and the ties with King’s Road were severed when the Territorial Regiment finally left the site in 1977.

Subsequently the site of the parade ground was built on with a sympathetic development officially opened by Lt Col P R C Dixon, of the Royal Anglian Regiment, for Havebury Housing Partnership.

The Bury Society gave the new development an award in recognition for its good planning and design in 1990.

With the closing down of the TA barracks in King’s Road (Yeomanry Yard) it was re-named the Army Reserve in 2013. This had moved to new premises in Newmarket Road, known today as Bury St Edmunds Army Reserve Centre, alongside part of the 3rd Royal Anglian Regiment.

So many name changes for just one organisation.