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Surprises...
This web site harbors a few gems and surprises. This page contains a massive surprise.
Fort Cumberland
On July 20, 2009, I had the chance to tour
Fort Cumberland
in Eastney (Portsmouth, Hampshire, UK) as a member of the
Portsmouth Environmental Forum.
It is impressive and I was surprised to discover this
immense and massive complex
almost invisibly tucked away outside of the awareness of many of us.
The current fort is the second fort at this location. It was Charles Stuart -
also known as bonny Prince Charlie, I believe - who built the first fort around 1740.
It held about 100 men, but rapidly became outdated. In 1782, the decision was made to upgrade, that is, rebuild.
This took until 1812.
The new fort was designed with five bastions to cover all angles of attack and to minimize damage from
incoming fire (richochets meaning a loss of energy to the bullets).
Raw materials were often short in supply
during the construction. Portsea Island was still largely unpopulated in those days, so
the railroad only went to Gosport, which is
located on the adjacent peninsula to the west. Limestone, bricks and shingles
therefore had to come in from Gosport.
(Note the sedimentological aspects visible in some of the weathered limestone, above.)
For that reasion, they later started using local clay to
make bricks for the core work on the construction site. Those local kilns baked half a million
bricks in eleven years' time. A better quality of brick was
used for the exterior, and those bricks still had to come from Gosport.
Convicts were used for skilled labor (pretty good
work; see
images of masonry below). Fort Cumberland was largely surrounded by salt marshes at the time, so attempts to escape never got
those convicts very far.
The second fort was able to hold seven hundred men. During the existence of the first fort, the French
sent spies over to assess its strength and concluded that it would take up to six thousand men to attack the fort.
To conquer the second fort would require a much larger number, and this made it as good as unconquerable in those days.
The parade - the wide open space at the fort's center - was initially kept free in view of incoming fire. Later,
bigger guns enabled the fort to disarm ships at larger distances, before they could fire into the fort.
That made it possible to start building on the parade.
In 1890, the fort was equipped with so-called disappearing guns that could be lowered and raised. Once ships started carrying
similarly large guns, however, the fort lost most of its initial purpose and became a training center.
The Germans attacked the fort during World War II (August 1940) and dropped 76 bombs on it.
The two images below are of a remaining bomb crater.
The fort has a highly unappealing detention cell - a small casemate - that surely worked as a deterrant, but
was still used as recently as 1972. It has some interesting
graffiti.
The fort is in good condition, but large portions of it need (restoring
and) preserving (water damage; you can even see small stalactites and stalagmites,
which are the result of
dissolution). The government still owns it and
uses it to house the headquarters of the Centre of Archaeology of English Heritage, and
a staff of about 70, including a few
geophysicists and an
environmental studies section.
By keeping the fort in active use, maintaining it is easier.
The guard house contains a lecture theater.
It also used to have a test facility for amphibian vehicles, pictured below. It still
contains water and forms a nice ecosystem of its own. Fort Cumberland also has swallows nesting, and
other interesting wildlife in the vicinity.
