A further request in April, voicing concerns about labour unrest in the mines and rumours of a mutinous militia unit in Newcastle, resulted in the Barrack Department receiving a direct order from the Duke of York to build barracks for a thousand men.

[1] The barracks, which were designed by Thomas Neill,[2] were built with speed using timber construction and were ready and occupied by July that same year.

[3] They stood at one end of the High Street, which ran for almost a mile between the barracks in the east and Bishopwearmouth Church in the west.

[4] Initially, they were located at the tip of the headland where the River Wear met the sea (with a mid-18th-century gun battery positioned beyond the barracks to seaward)[5] until, in the 1840s, Hudson Dock was built on reclaimed land to the east.

[8] Following the Childers Reforms and the formation of the Durham Light Infantry from the amalgamation of the 68th and 106th Regiments of Foot in 1881,[8] the Durham Light Infantry moved out of the barracks and established its depot at Fenham Barracks in Newcastle upon Tyne in 1884.