Garrison Point Fort
Garrison Point Fort is the ruin of an artillery fort at the end of the Garrison Point Peninsula , a peninsula in Sheerness on the Isle of Sheppey in the English county of Kent . Built in the 1860s in response to a feared French invasion, it was the last of a series of artillery batteries to have existed on the site since the 16th century. From this position one could monitor the strategically important confluence of the River Medway into the Thames . It is a rare example of a two-tier casemate fort - one of only two of its kind in the country. In other respects its layout corresponds to that of various other forts on the lower Thames. The fort remained in operation until 1956 and now serves as a port facility on the Sheerness docks.
Strategic context
The fort was built in response to the naval arms race between the United Kingdom and France. British coastal defense had not been significantly modernized since the Coalition Wars, but a new generation of precise-firing and powerful guns mounted on fast, maneuverable, iron-armored warships had the existing forts from the 18th and 19th centuries along the British coastline made worthless. The Thames was considered partially vulnerable. It was one of the most important trade routes in the country and a number of important naval facilities were located on it, e. B. Deptford Equipment Depot , Woolwich Arsenal Arms Works , North Woolwich Shipyards and Purfleet Depot .
The government's response to the heightened threat was the appeal of the Royal Commission on the Defense of the United Kingdom , which published a far-reaching report in 1860. It called for many of the existing forts to be modernized or completely rebuilt in such a way that strategically important and vulnerable points along the coastline could be monitored from them. A total of about 70 forts and batteries were built on the English coast as a result of this report.
Garrison Point had long been fortified. A square log house was built there in 1547, during the reign of Henry VIII . It was about to be replaced by a new fort when it was destroyed in June 1667 during the raid on the Medway during the Second Anglo-Dutch War . It was rebuilt in 1669 according to plans by Bernard de Gomme , who also designed Tilbury Fort further up the river. Two additional forts, the Half Moon Battery and the Cavalier Battery , were added later to reinforce the defensive structure. The Royal Commission requested that De Gommes fortress made of red bricks and the two batteries built later, which modern artillery could not withstand, be replaced with an armored artillery fort in the same place. The range and angle of fire of its cannons would overlap those of the Grain Fort and Grain Tower (and later the Grain Wing Battery and Dummy Battery ) on the other side of the River Medway, on the Isle of Grain .
Construction and layout
Construction began in February 1861 and continued until the last armor was installed in June 1872. At that time about half of the guns were already installed. The new fort was in the shape of a semicircle, one of only two of its kind in the fortress program of the 1860s. The other was Fort Picklecombe in Cornwall . It had two levels of gunnery , each with 17 granite-clad casemates in which 36 heavy guns were installed behind 2000 tons of iron armor. Another two turrets were planned on the roof, but were never built. The magazines were in the underground in the cellar of the fort. Most of the building was made of brick, but there were also concrete components. Walls and piers are 4.4 meters thick. The semicircular casemates are closed at the rear by a series of well-defendable buildings made of ashlar blocks ( Kentish Ragstone ), which have loopholes and gun ports in the flanks to enable the fort to be defended at close range. A parade ground was arranged in the middle of the fort.
History of use
Garrison Point Fort was initially equipped with 9 ″ and 10 ″ muzzle loading guns with rifled barrels. In 1880 this armament was supplemented by 11 ″ and 12.5 ″ guns of the same design. A Brennan torpedo station for wired torpedoes was added in 1884 and remained in service until 1906. The muzzle loading guns were superfluous at the end of the 19th century and were removed in 1896, and the casemates were converted into barracks and camps. In 1909 two 6 "Mark VII breech-loading cannons were mounted on the roof of the fort and 12 pounder rapid-fire cannons in a lower row of the casemates.
A searchlight for coastal artillery and a concrete magazine were in the First World War, built the fort to the east, along with a machine gun - Pillbox that no longer exists today. Garrison Point Fort remained in service during World War II and was equipped with two 6-pounder rapid-fire cannons to combat fast-moving attackers such as speedboats and destroyers. One of these cannons was installed on the roof of the fort and the other in front of the front of the casemates. New gun locations, turrets, a magazine and a searchlight were added during this time. In 1944, the risk of invasion or attack from the sea had decreased, so that the fort could be temporarily decommissioned.
After the war, the fort was used by the Royal Navy Auxiliary Service as an emergency port control center in the event of a nuclear war . Parts of the magazine that was no longer needed were converted into a nuclear bunker for officers. In 1956, when the United Kingdom refused to continue its coastal defense program, Garrison Point Fort was permanently decommissioned and sold to the owners of the adjacent Sheerness Dock.
today
Since 1977 the fort has been listed as a historical building of the 2nd degree and is part of a larger system of defenses in Sheerness, which are considered a Scheduled Monument . Garrison Point Fort is owned by Medway Ports Ltd , the operators of the Sheerness docks, and is not open to the public as it is in the port area. Some changes were made to the fort so that it can be used as a docking facility. In the 1980s it served for a time as a terminal for the ferry service to mainland Europe, which has now been discontinued, which necessitated the installation of a footpath through the casemates to the ferries. A radar tower for navigation was installed on the roof of the fort in 1962.
Garrison Point Fort is believed to be in a "slow decay" stage and has been included on the Heritage-at-Risk register. Even if most of the fort's furnishings have been removed, traces of the original furnishings can still be found. Much of the Brennan torpedo station and the associated exit rails have survived, even if they are already heavily corroded. The structure of the fort is basically still in order, but its roof and interior have already deteriorated.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e f Andrew Saunders, Victor Smith: Kent's Defense Heritage - Gazetteer Part One . Chapter: Garrison Point Fort . Kent County Council, Canterbury 2001.
- ^ JD Wilson: Later Nineteenth Century Defenses of the Thames, including Grain Fort in Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research . No. 168. Issue XLI (December 1963). P. 182.
- ^ Slough Fort and wing batteries . Historic England. English Heritage. Retrieved November 14, 2016.
- ↑ a b c d Garrison Point Fort . Pastscape. Historic England. English Heritage. Retrieved November 14, 2016.
- ^ Naval and Military Intellegence in Hereford Times (February 2, 1861).
- ↑ Southend in Chelmsford Chronicle (June 21, 1872).
- ↑ Michael Foley: Front-Line Kent . Sutton Publishing Limited. July 1, 2013. Retrieved November 14, 2016.
- ^ Garrison Point Fort . Historic England. English Heritage. Retrieved November 14, 2016.
- ↑ Sheerness Defenses . Pastscape. Historic England. English Heritage. Retrieved November 14, 2016.
- ↑ Exploring Kent's Past - Garrison Point Fort . Kent County Council. Retrieved November 14, 2016.
- ^ Heritage At Risk Register - Garrison Point Fort . English Heritage. Retrieved July 19, 2015.
Web links
Coordinates: 51 ° 26 '48.8 " N , 0 ° 44' 39.9" E