Grain Tower

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Grain Tower at low tide

Grain Tower is the ruin of a gun turret in the mouth of the River Medway off the coast of the Isle of Grain , just east of the village of Grain in the English administrative county Medway . The tower was built like a Martello tower in the middle of the 19th century . Martello Towers were built along the British and Irish coastlines in the early 19th century. Grain Tower is the last turret based on this pattern. The reason for the construction was the need to protect the important shipyards of Sheerness and Chatham from a feared French attack from the sea at a time of political tension between the two countries in the 1850s.

Great advances in artillery technology in the mid-19th century meant the tower was practically useless as soon as it was completed. The proposal to convert it into a casemate was dropped because the costs were too high. At the end of the 19th century, the tower was given a new meaning as a defense against fast torpedo boats . It was used in WWI and WWII after the building was significantly modified to accommodate new rapid-fire cannons . In 1956 the Grain Tower was decommissioned and is now in ruins. The tower has been in private hands since 2005 and was sold to a new owner in 2014 for £ 400,000.

Connections and construction

Map of the fortresses at the entrance to the River Medway

At the time the tower was built, there were widespread fears that the political rivalry between the United Kingdom and France could lead to a French invasion or a sea attack across the Thames . 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 . There were also large military installations on the River Medway, in particular the Chatham Dockyard , which was attacked with fatal consequences in 1667, during the Second Anglo-Dutch War . So it seemed extremely important to keep an enemy from entering the River Medway and from reaching the shipyards.

The Grain Tower stands about 500 meters off the eastern tip of the Isle of Grain, where the mouth of the River Medway meets the estuary of the Thames. It was built on a sandbank called the Grain Spit and connected to the island's coast by an east-west causeway. This location allowed the range of the cannons and their angle of fire to overlap with that of Garrison Point Fort on the Isle of Sheppey across the River Medway.

Construction began in 1848, but soon difficulties have been encountered in laying the foundations, and so the construction rested until 1853. After that, the builders needed Kirk and Parry from Lincolnshire almost two years to complete the construction. The York Herald wrote: "Because of the exposed position of the tower, which has to suffer from the influence of the sea and the weather, there were very great difficulties with the progress of the work in the winter months." The tower was completed in late 1855 and on On November 17th of that year handed over to the military administration. Construction costs had exceeded budget by more than 50% and were £ 16,798 (around £ 1,445,200 today).

The tower is three stories high, clad with granite ashlar and has an almost oval floor plan. At the bottom it is 21.8 meters by 19.3 meters and the original height was 12.9 meters. Its walls are 3.6 meters thick. The gun crew lived in accommodation in the tower. There were also storage rooms for food and ammunition in the building. The overall construction corresponds to that of a Martello tower, dozens of which were built on the British and Irish coasts during the coalition wars at the beginning of the 19th century. Grain Tower is believed to be the last Martello Tower built in Britain.

History of use

The tower was initially equipped with three 68-pounder smoothbore guns, which were housed on gun platforms on the roof and fired from a barbette . While Martello towers could easily withstand fire from smoothbore guns of the early 19th century, the development of a new generation of much more powerful breech- loading guns with rifled barrels rendered the Grain Tower useless as soon as it was completed. The tower's weakness against rifled barrel fire was never fully communicated. A new threat of invasion towards the end of the 1850s led the British government to set up the Royal Commission on the Defense of the United Kingdom , which published a far-reaching 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. 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 with Grain Fort and the existing gun battery at Garrison Point on the Isle of Sheppey was modernized and fortified, so that Garrison Point Fort was created.

Close up view of WWII fire control tower built on top of Grain Tower.

The tower's smoothbore guns were soon replaced by breech-loading guns with rifled barrels: a 56-pounder and two 32-pounders. These were only dismantled in 1910 when the tower was used as a transmission tower. In 1915, two 4.7-inch rapid-fire guns were converted from the Grain Wing Battery to the Grain Tower in order to counter the new threat posed by high-speed torpedo boats. This required the construction of an elevated concrete and stone structure on the roof of the tower in which the new guns were housed. In addition, an outbuilding with space for detachments , storage and fire control was created. The tower itself was also modified to expand the ammunition store.

The cannons were preserved during World War I when the Grain Tower was added to an additional purpose as one end of a locking chain across the River Medway to Sheerness. The massive iron chain is still there today; it is wrapped around the foundation of the tower. A solid section of wood from the barrier chain was built between the tower and the coastline. The guns were removed from the turret in 1929.

During the Second World War, the tower was changed significantly more when a double-barreled 6-pounder gun was installed there in 1939. A large concrete gun platform was built on the roof and a fire control tower behind it. A searchlight was also attached to the building. At the rear of the tower, a block of concrete and brick barracks was installed on stilts to house the cannon detachment. It is a free-standing construction that is connected to the tower by walkways. The tower was temporarily decommissioned in 1944 and finally abandoned in 1956.

today

The Grain Tower has remained largely intact, but has been included in the Heritage-at-Risk register because of its poor condition and progressive deterioration . English Heritage has listed the tower as a Grade II Historic Structure since 1986, and it is part of a larger Scheduled Monument designated in 1976 to protect "the coastal artillery defenses on the Isle of Grain, just east and southeast of the village of Grain". The Grain Tower is not open to the public but is used by anglers without permission and city ​​explorers have also been seen there.

In 2005 a private individual bought the Grain Tower from Crown Estate and put it up for sale again in 2010 for a price of £ 500,000. The owner, a south-east London contractor named Simon Cowper, said it "just doesn't make a good private home - on top of the renovation costs." It was reportedly sold for £ 400,000 in 2014, though the new owner wanted to stay “under the radar” until approval was given for restoration.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f Grain Tower . Pastscape. Historic England. English Heritage. Retrieved November 16, 2016.
  2. ^ 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.
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g h 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. ↑ a b c W.H. Clements: Towers of Strength: Martello Towers Worldwide . Pen and Sword. 1998. Retrieved November 16, 2016.
  5. ^ Defenses of the Thames . In: York Herald , November 24, 1855, p. 11. 
  6. ^ Slough Fort and wing batteries . Historic England. English Heritage. Retrieved November 16, 2016.
  7. ^ WH Clements: Towers of Strength: Martello Towers Worldwide . Pen and Sword. 1998. Retrieved November 16, 2016.
  8. ↑ Heritage at Risk Register - Artillery Tower (Grain Tower), Isle of Grain - Medway (UA) . English Heritage. Retrieved July 29, 2015.
  9. ^ Grain Tower . Historic England. English Heritage. Retrieved November 16, 2016.
  10. ^ Coastal artillery defenses on the Isle of Grain, immediately east and south east of Grain village . Historic England. English Heritage. Retrieved November 16, 2016.
  11. ↑ 5 bed property for sale, Guide price £ 500,000, No 1 The Thames, Sheerness ME3 . Zoopla. Retrieved November 16, 2016.
  12. ↑ Maev Kennedy: Disused Thames continued for sale at £ 500,000 . In: The Guardian . August 14, 2014. Retrieved November 16, 2016.
  13. ↑ Christopher Hooton: For sale: Abandoned fort on the River Thames . In: The Independent . August 14, 2014. Retrieved November 16, 2016.
  14. ^ Christopher Hooton: Someone bought that abandoned fort on the Thames for £ 400,000 . October 7, 2014. Retrieved November 16, 2016.

Web links

Commons : Grain Tower  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Coordinates: 51 ° 27 ′ 6 "  N , 0 ° 43 ′ 52.5"  E