The Shrapnel Barracks was a British army base providing living accommodation in Woolwich in southeast London from the mid-19th century until the 1960s.

[2] The Royal Horse Infirmary of the Army Veterinary Department stood immediately to the south, and there were several stable blocks in the vicinity.

[3] To the north of the barracks rows of huts had been laid out on the common, in lines running north-south, in the early years of the 19th century.

[4] Because they obstructed military use of the common, the garrison commander replaced them with rudimentary single-room dwellings (a hundred, arranged in pairs back-to-back), strung along the edge of the road to Charlton.

The hospital had 456 beds in 16 wards, and cared for servicemen and their families, Chelsea Pensioners and Far East Prisoner of War survivors, plus local civilians.

In March 2001 it was reopened as the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, and was later (2006) rebuilt and extended, though some original features, such as the main entrance, remain.

[20] The barracks name is recalled by a road, Shrapnel Close, skirting the western edge of part of the hospital site.

[21] Spike Milligan's father Leo joined the army as a boy soldier in the Royal Artillery at Shrapnel Barracks in 1904,[22] while journalist Bill Deedes was stationed there briefly in 1940.