The barracks took their name from Sir George Murray, Master-General of the Ordnance at the time of construction — a man whose role in British imperial administration put his name on fortifications and institutions around the world, whether he visited them or not. Murray's tenure defined the early shape of British military infrastructure across its growing empire, and Hong Kong was no exception. The garrison needed a home in the new colony, and the site chosen between present-day Garden Road and Cotton Tree Drive would serve that purpose for well over a century. Officers were quartered in what became known as Murray House, a Neoclassical building close to Queen's Road that eventually outlasted the barracks themselves. The rest of the complex — parade ground, enlisted quarters, supporting buildings — occupied a substantial footprint in what is now one of Asia's busiest financial corridors.

Murray Barracks was not a single building but a compound, and its layout reflected the organized logic of Victorian military planning. The main barracks sat between Garden Road and Cotton Tree Drive, occupying the site now held by Asia Pacific Centre. Across Garden Road lay Murray Parade Ground, where formations were drilled and ceremonies observed under the subtropical sun. Beyond the parade ground stood Queen's Road North Barracks, later renamed Wellington Barracks. Further west, behind a lane that still carries the memory of its purpose — Battery Path — stood the Murray Battery, a line of coastal artillery positions overlooking Victoria Harbour. The whole ensemble formed a coherent defensive and administrative cluster at the base of Government Hill, giving the colonial administration both military protection and a visible display of British permanence.

The barracks were established in 1846, the same year that Murray House was built as officers' quarters — a date that places them squarely in the early consolidation of British rule following the cession of Hong Kong under the Treaty of Nanking in 1842. For 116 years they housed successive generations of soldiers, adapting to changing strategic circumstances as Hong Kong grew from a small trading post to a major commercial city. The installation closed in 1962, by which point the military's footprint in Central had become incompatible with the colony's explosive economic development. The land was too valuable, the city too dense. Redevelopment followed swiftly, and one by one the buildings came down — all except the officers' quarters, which earned a fate more unusual than demolition.

In 1982, as the Bank of China Tower was being planned for the site of Murray House, a decision was made that would become one of Hong Kong's more remarkable preservation stories. Rather than demolish the 1846 Neoclassical structure, workers dismantled it brick by brick — labelling each of the more than 3,000 blocks and cataloguing them for future reassembly. The pieces went into storage, where they sat through the construction boom of the late colonial years and the handover of 1997. In 1990, the Housing Department proposed rebuilding Murray House in Stanley, on the south side of Hong Kong Island. Work was completed in 2001, and the building reopened in 2002 beside Stanley Bay. It now houses restaurants and shops, its Doric and Ionic columns looking out over a very different waterfront than the one its original foundations once faced.

Murray Barracks itself is gone without visible trace, absorbed into the glass-and-steel cityscape of Admiralty. But the name persists in the urban fabric: Murray Road curves through the district, and the Murray Building — a distinctive 1960s government office tower — stands nearby. Battery Path, the lane that once led to the artillery positions, remains a named street threading up Government Hill. A replica cannon near the Former Central Government Offices gestures toward the battery's memory. And Murray House stands in Stanley, structurally intact but stripped of its heritage grading because the relocation was judged not to meet international preservation standards. History in Hong Kong is rarely stationary — sometimes it gets moved, brick by brick, to somewhere the city hasn't caught up with yet.