Fort Clarence is a now defunct fortification that is located in Rochester,

Kent Kent is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Essex across the Thames Estuary to the north, the Strait of Dover to the south-east, East Sussex to the south-west, Surrey to the west, and Gr ...

, England.

History

The archway by the fort's drawbridge was demolished in the 1930s. The fort, on the left, is now converted into flats. The fort was built between 1808 and 1812 to prevent invaders gaining access from

Maidstone Maidstone is the largest Town status in the United Kingdom, town in Kent, England, of which it is the county town. Maidstone is historically important and lies east-south-east of London. The River Medway runs through the centre of the town, l ...

Road to 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 ...

. The work was composed of a long brick revetted dry ditch running between a fortified guardroom on the Rochester-Maidstone Road to a similar tower alongside the Medway. The principal work (still surviving) is a massive red brick

keep A keep is a type of fortified tower built within castles during the Middle Ages by European nobility. Scholars have debated the scope of the word ''keep'', but usually consider it to refer to large towers in castles that were fortified residen ...

, in the style of a

medieval In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the 5th to the late 15th centuries, similarly to the post-classical period of World history (field), global history. It began with the fall of the West ...

castle A castle is a type of fortification, fortified structure built during the Middle Ages predominantly by the nobility or royalty and by Military order (monastic society), military orders. Scholars usually consider a ''castle'' to be the private ...

, which served as gun tower and observation post. In the sides of the tower were

embrasure An embrasure (or crenel or crenelle; sometimes called gunhole in the domain of Age of Gunpowder, gunpowder-era architecture) is the opening in a battlement between two raised solid portions (merlons). Alternatively, an embrasure can be a sp ...

s to sweep the ditch with fire. The dry ditch running across St Margaret's Street was crossed by

drawbridge A drawbridge or draw-bridge is a type of moveable bridge typically at the entrance to a castle or tower surrounded by a moat. In some forms of English, including American English, the word ''drawbridge'' commonly refers to all types of moveable b ...

through a substantial casemated guardhouse in the form of an arch (which was demolished in the 1930s). From the tower ran a series of tunnels to the outlying guardhouses. Behind the dry ditch running from the tower down to Maidstone Road was a range of domestic building and

barracks Barracks are buildings used to accommodate military personnel and quasi-military personnel such as police. The English word originates from the 17th century via French and Italian from an old Spanish word 'soldier's tent', but today barracks ar ...

. After 1815, the

fort A fortification (also called a fort, fortress, fastness, or stronghold) is a military construction designed for the defense of territories in warfare, and is used to establish rule in a region during peacetime. The term is derived from La ...

served a variety of purposes, including military prison and lunatic asylum. After nearby Fort Pitt became a military hospital, the patients were moved from Clarence to a new asylum, although the prison remained, with accounts of floggings being given in local newspapers. The fort was used by the garrison

artillery Artillery consists of ranged weapons that launch Ammunition, munitions far beyond the range and power of infantry firearms. Early artillery development focused on the ability to breach defensive walls and fortifications during sieges, and l ...

throughout the First World War as a recruiting centre. After the war, a large Territorial and Volunteer Reserve centre was built alongside the site and the main barrack site run down. During the Second World War, the

Home Guard Home guard is a title given to various military organizations at various times, with the implication of an emergency or reserve force raised for local defense. The term "home guard" was first officially used in the American Civil War, starting ...

used Fort Clarence as headquarters and, with the invasion scare, the fort was pressed into service again. After the war, the fort became derelict, then in the mid 1960s the GPO (now

British Telecom BT Group plc (formerly British Telecom) is a British Multinational corporation, multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered in London, England. It has operations in around 180 countries and is the largest provider of fixed-li ...

) moved in, demolishing all the barracks, filling in a substantial part of the moat and demolishing the Maidstone Road guardhouse. The most substantial remains now are the brick gun tower and section of ditch from St Margaret's Street into the public gardens opposite. Below the gardens — donated to the city of Rochester by former mayor Charles Willis in memory of a son killed in the First World War — is a

sally port A sallyport is a secure, controlled entry way to an enclosure, e.g., a fortification or prison. The entrance is usually protected by some means, such as a fixed wall on the outside, parallel to the door, which must be circumvented to enter and ...

with sealed-up door. This connected with tunnel that led to the gun tower and probably to the Medway tower, which is long demolished. Intruders into the tunnel system would have been greeted by fire from

loophole A loophole is an ambiguity or inadequacy in a system, such as a law or security, which can be used to circumvent or otherwise avoid the purpose, implied or explicitly stated, of the system. Originally, the word meant an arrowslit, a narrow vertic ...

s built into the entrance tunnels walls. The tower was transferred by English Heritage to private developers in the late 1990s and has now been converted to apartments. From the outside, the tower has been restored to pristine condition although there is an obvious contemporary structure added on the roof. On both sides the lowest pair of

s appear to be below ground level which indicates that originally the ditch was much deeper and more formidable than it now appears. On the east site, the brow of the hill has also been flattened to allow houses to be built and therefore the strategic dominance of the location harder to visualise. The site is a

Grade II listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building is a structure of particular architectural or historic interest deserving of special protection. Such buildings are placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, H ...

History

References

Further reading