Artillery Barracks

Originally Ruse planned far more baracks than were built in the end, actually he planned 16 plus a royal castle opposing a most beautiful baroque church. But as often is the case, it turned out more modestly, and only 6 barracks were actually erected to house the soldiers. They were originally built as shown on the plan above (depicting  Svanestok). The most southern end of Artilleristok has today been restored to the original look.

The barracks were divided lengthwise by a firewall into a “front barrack” and a “rear barrack”, and each half house was divided into a number of separate barracks, each of which had a door, a staircase between stories and a chimney (shared with the barrack on the other side of the firewall) – even if only the first floor had a fireplace. Each storey had two rooms, that supposedly should house 6 grown-ups (for privates, officers could have one for them self). If they had children, these did not count – they had to find room as best they could. Each room was equipped with two tree-men beds, a rough table and two benches. Poor to our standard, but then almost luxury, since the alternative was to be housed with the citizens, who received almost no payment, and consequently put the soldiers in the worst rooms, in the attic or in a damp cellar, or even in an outhouse with no heating nor any isolation.

The floors of the rooms in first floor were brickfloors, consequently rather cold. To booth often flooded during wintertime. Lightning was sparse in the citadel, especially in the quarters of the private soldiers.

During the centuries the barracks were rebuilt over and over. They also fell into decay, as seen on the picture taken just before the restoration began in the 1950ties. The big windows were in collective rooms that went all through the building, and so high, that they took to storeys. Thus it took quite a lot to bring them back to previous look  and unfortunately the chimneys disappeared in the process. It was decided to keep the later mansard-roofs built during the 1780es, but since this time is best documented, it has been decided to keep the looks as ca. 1780. 

 

 
Often the restoration had to be VERY thorough as these pictures of Svanestok 1956 shows.