The British Army in the United Kingdom 1939-45 H5865

Fort Horsted is a

scheduled monument In the United Kingdom, a scheduled monument is a nationally important archaeological site or historic building, given protection against unauthorised change. The various pieces of legislation that legally protect heritage assets from damage, visu ...

(Monument Number 416040) that lies in the Horsted Valley to the South of

Chatham, Kent Chatham ( ) is a town within the Medway unitary authority in the ceremonial county of Kent, England. The town forms a conurbation with neighbouring towns Gillingham, Rochester, Strood and Rainham. In 2020 it had a population of 80,596. Th ...

, England. It is a late 19th-century Land Fort, and one of six constructed around Chatham and

Gillingham, Kent Gillingham ( ) is a town in Kent, England, which forms a conurbation with neighbouring Chatham, Kent, Chatham, Rochester, Kent, Rochester, Strood and Rainham, Kent, Rainham. It is the largest town in the borough of Medway and in 2020 had a populat ...

to protect HM Dockyard Chatham from attack. Originally proposed in the

Royal Commission on the Defence of the United Kingdom The Royal Commission on the Defence of the United Kingdom was a committee formed in 1859 to enquire into the ability of the United Kingdom to defend itself against an attempted invasion by a foreign power, and to advise the British Government on ...

Report, published in 1860, it and the other land defences were omitted as part of general cost cutting with only the coastal defences on the

River Medway The River Medway is a river in South East England. It rises in the High Weald AONB, High Weald, West Sussex and flows through Tonbridge, Maidstone and the Medway conurbation in Kent, before emptying into the Thames Estuary near Sheerness, a to ...

being retained and completed under the original 1860 proposals. It was not until the mid-1870s that a revised programme was accepted, which included the construction of a convict prison at Borstal, Rochester, to provide low cost labour for the construction of a line of four forts, Fort Borstal, Fort Bridgewood, Fort Horsted and

Fort Luton Fort Luton was built between 1876 and 1892 south of Chatham, Medway, South East England. It is one of the five late Victorian land front forts built to defend the overland approaches to Chatham. It is the smallest of the Chatham forts and was buil ...

(a further three forts were constructed with the use of convict labour). Its construction started in 1879 and was complete by 1889 after much delay.

Materials

The fort was constructed almost entirely of

concrete Concrete is a composite material composed of aggregate bound together with a fluid cement that cures to a solid over time. It is the second-most-used substance (after water), the most–widely used building material, and the most-manufactur ...

, topped with

chalk Chalk is a soft, white, porous, sedimentary carbonate rock. It is a form of limestone composed of the mineral calcite and originally formed deep under the sea by the compression of microscopic plankton that had settled to the sea floor. Ch ...

and

earth Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to Planetary habitability, harbor life. This is enabled by Earth being an ocean world, the only one in the Solar System sustaining liquid surface water. Almost all ...

with no visible concrete exposed from the outside, except from the gorge or rear of the fort. The ditch was protected by two single and one double counterscarp galleries.

Armaments

Although the original plans of the fort proposed fixed armament, by its completion there had been a shift away from fixed armament to moveable guns. The fort would not been armed, unless actual threat materialised and then with moveable field artillery. In the event of actual invasion and an attack on HM Dockyard Chatham, additional field defence would have augmented the forts, with trenches and battery positions. In fact in 1907 during summer manoeuvres such defences were probably constructed.

World wars

Deemed to have become obsolete by 1910, the fort formed part of Chatham's land defences in both World Wars. In

World War I World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

brick emplacements and a pillbox were built on the ramparts, and fixed

anti-aircraft gun Anti-aircraft warfare (AAW) is the counter to aerial warfare and includes "all measures designed to nullify or reduce the effectiveness of hostile air action".AAP-6 It encompasses surface-based, subsurface ( submarine-launched), and air-ba ...

s of an early type were installed (possibly 12-pdr coastal defence guns on improvised high-angle mountings, not be confused with the later naval version).

The name

The fort was named after a local hamlet. Horsted is speculated to have been named after the legendary Saxon warrior

Horsa Hengist (, ) and Horsa are legendary Germanic peoples, Germanic brothers who according to later English legends and ethnogenesis theories led the Angles (tribe), Angles, Saxons and Jutes, the progenitor groups of modern English people, in thei ...

, who was killed at nearby

Aylesford Aylesford is a village and civil parish on the River Medway in Kent, England, northwest of Maidstone. Originally a small riverside settlement, the old village comprises around 60 houses, many of which were formerly shops. Two pubs, a villa ...

while fighting the Britons.

The fort today

The fort survives relatively intact and is currently in use as a

business park A business park or office park is a designated area of land in which many office buildings are grouped together. These types of developments are often located in suburban areas where land and building costs are more affordable, and are typically ...

. While it is in relatively good condition, its commercial use has seen some new construction and modification which has seen the significant loss of the original structure and features.

References

{{Defences of medway Forts in Medway