Grain Fort

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View of the forts at the mouth of the River Medway 1870: ( from left to right ) Garrison Point, Grain Tower, Grain Fort

Grain Fort which is ruin an artillery fortress just east of the village Grain on the Isle of Grain in the English administrative county Medway . The fort was in the 1860s, a time of tensions with France , to protect the mouth of the River Medway in the estuary of the Thames built. The location of the fortress made it possible for its cannons to reach the nearby Grain Tower and the Garrison Point Fort in Sheernesssupport on the other side of the River Medway. Grain Fort was rebuilt several times and its armament brought up to date with the latest technology. In 1956, when the UK abandoned its coastal defense program, it was decommissioned. It was then torn down. The remains of the fort are still visible today and integrated into a park on the coast.

Strategic context

Map of the fortresses at the entrance to the River Medway

The fort was built in response to the naval arms race of Great Britain and France. British coastal defense had not improved significantly since the time of the Coalition Wars, but a new generation of highly accurate and powerful guns mounted on fast-moving, maneuverable, iron-armored warships made up the existing artillery locations that ran along in the 18th and 19th centuries along the British coastline were useless. The Thames estuary was classified as particularly vulnerable. Not only was it one of the most important trade routes in the country, but there were also a number of important naval facilities on it, e. B. the Deptford equipment yards , the arms factories of the Woolwich arsenal and the stores at Purfleet.

The government's response to the increased threat was the appeal of the Royal Commission on the Defense of the United Kingdom , which published an extensive report in 1860. They demanded that many of the existing forts should be expanded or built from scratch, and that new forts should be built to protect the strategically important and vulnerable points along the coast. A total of about 70 forts and batteries were then built on the English coast.

There was already a battery of guns off the Isle of Grain, Grain Tower, about a kilometer from what will later be the Grain Fort. It was built in the style of a Martello tower in the years 1848–1855, but the introduction of the heavy and precise shooting muzzle-loaders with rifled barrels in the 1850s made it unusable immediately after its completion. The commission's report of 1860 called for the Grain Tower to be rebuilt into a fully casemated fort built around the existing structure. But the cost of doing this was deemed too high and the proposal was dropped as part of a cost-cutting initiative to reduce investment in the fortification program. Instead, a new land fortress was built in Grain and the existing gun battery at Garrison Point on the Isle of Sheppey was modernized and fortified, so that Garrison Point Fort was created.

Construction and layout

Grain Fort was constructed in a heptagonal shape from 1861 to 1868. Initially it had 13 open gun platforms on an earthwork under which the magazines and connecting passages were laid. A semicircular donjon in brick construction in north-south orientation stood in the middle of the fort. It housed accommodations for the garrison and it was equipped with defensive facilities, such as loopholes in the front facade to enable musket fire. It also had battlements at the back, where the main entrance was, to protect the defenders from attack from behind. He had four capons that protected the corners and were accessible via underground paths. An inner trench around the donjon was covered with three more capons and two half capons, which led into the earth walls on the one hand and to the donjon on the other. The donjon could be entered via a bridge that connected it to the Terreplein .

History of use

Grain Fort's initial armament consisted of 13 heavy muzzle-loading guns with rifled barrels (six 11-inch, four 9-inch, and three 64-pounder). At the end of the 19th century these were replaced by four much more powerful guns: two 9.2-inch Mark-X breech- loaders and two 4.7-inch guns. The original 13 gun platforms were reduced to 5 in 1895. Even during the Second World War , the fort remained in use and underwent further changes; its two 6-inch guns for close-range defense were provided with bomb-proof enclosures. Likewise, fire control equipment have been added and spigot - mortar at both ends of Terre Plein . In 1956 the fort was decommissioned and five years later sold to the local administration. This demolished all buildings above ground.

Two additional gun batteries were later installed nearby to support the fort's firepower. It was the Grain Wing Battery (built in the years 1890–1895) 50 meters south of Grain Fort and the Dummy Battery (built in the years 1861–1868) about one kilometer south of the fort. Neither of the two was long in the Use before the weapons were dismantled and the facilities were used for other purposes. Both batteries were decommissioned and sold along with the Grain Fort.

today

Only a few remains of Grain Fort above ground are visible today. Not only was the donjon demolished, but the places where the above-ground buildings once stood were filled with rubble and rubbish. The earthworks of the fortress and a brick hill are still preserved today and a footpath connects the concrete aprons of the filled gun platforms. The front capons are covered with earth, but most of them are still intact. Magazines and tunnels in the cellars still exist and have been explored by city ​​explorers . Many fixtures are said to be preserved to this day. The grounds of the fort are now part of the Isle of Grain Coastal Park , which is managed by Friends of the Coastal Park together with the owners, the St James Parish Council . The fort is part of a Scheduled Monument , which was designated in 1976 to protect "the defenses of the coastal artillery on the Isle of Grain, directly east and southeast of the village of Grain".

Individual evidence

  1. ^ 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.
  2. ^ Slough Fort and wing batteries . Historic England. English Heritage. Retrieved November 16, 2016.
  3. ↑ Andrew Saunders, Victor Smith: Kent's Defense Heritage - Gazetteer Part One . Chapter: Grain Tower and Boom Defense - KD 96 . Kent County Council, Canterbury 2001.
  4. ^ WH Clements: Towers of Strength: Martello Towers Worldwide . Pen and Sword. 1998. Retrieved November 16, 2016.
  5. ^ A b c Andrew Saunders, Victor Smith: Kent's Defense Heritage - Gazetteer Part One . Chapter: Grain Fort - KD 87 . Kent County Council, Canterbury 2001.
  6. ↑ Andrew Saunders, Victor Smith: Kent's Defense Heritage - Gazetteer Part One . Chapter: Grain Wing Battery - KD 94 . Kent County Council, Canterbury 2001.
  7. ^ A b Coastal artillery defenses on the Isle of Grain, immediately east and south east of Grain village . Historic England. English Heritage. Retrieved November 16, 2016.
  8. ^ Isle of Grain Coastal Park . Friends of the Coastal Park. Retrieved November 16, 2016.

Web links and sources

Coordinates: 51 ° 27 '25.9 "  N , 0 ° 43' 10.9"  E