Raglan Road

The Raglan Estate stands on the site of the Raglan Barracks, Devonport which were begun in 1853 the year before Britain became involved in the Crimean War and completed in 1858, three years after hostilities had ended.

The barracks occupied the site of four earlier service accommodation blocks built in the 1750s. The new barracks were named after a man, Lord Fitzroy James Henry Somerset, who had begun his military career in 1804.

Fifty years later, as head of the British Forces in the Crimea, he was at the successful Battle of Alma and at Balaclava when the Light Brigade made their famous charge. He was still in command out there in June 1855 when at the age of 67 he died. Remembered, although not without some criticism, as a great national hero, Raglan was honoured in the naming of the erstwhile barracks here.

A former aide of Wellington who had one of his arms amputated, without an anaesthetic, at the Battle of Waterloo, Raglan is also remembered as the man who gave his name to the overcoat without shoulder seams.

EH 11 June 1994