Sandown Fort (map reference ) is a fort built in

Sandown Sandown is a seaside resort and civil parishes in England, civil parish on the south-east coast of the Isle of Wight, England. The neighbouring resort of Shanklin and the settlement of Lake, Isle of Wight, Lake are sited just to the south of t ...

on the

Isle of Wight The Isle of Wight (Help:IPA/English, /waɪt/ Help:Pronunciation respelling key, ''WYTE'') is an island off the south coast of England which, together with its surrounding uninhabited islets and Skerry, skerries, is also a ceremonial county. T ...

in the middle of

Sandown Bay Sandown Bay is a broad open bay which stretches for much of the length of the Isle of Wight's southeastern coast. It extends from Culver Down, near Yaverland in the northeast of the Island, to just south of Shanklin, near the village of Luc ...

. It is one of the many

Palmerston Forts The Palmerston Forts are a group of forts and associated structures around the coasts of the United Kingdom and Ireland. The forts were built during the Victorian period on the recommendations of the 1860 Royal Commission on the Defence of the ...

built on the island to protect it in response to a perceived French invasion. It was a replacement of the earlier Sandown Diamond Fort as, in 1859, the

Royal Commission A royal commission is a major ad-hoc formal public inquiry into a defined issue in some monarchies. They have been held in the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Norway, Malaysia, Mauritius and Saudi Arabia. In republics an equi ...

felt it did not offer suitable protection. Construction of the fort began in April 1861 and was completed by September 1864 at a cost of £73,876. In later documents it is often referred to as Granite Fort. The fort originally had 18 9-inch R.M.L guns facing the sea behind iron shields, these guns were later upgraded and an extra 5 inches of armor was added. The fort was sold in 1930 but during

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

the fort played a significant role in the

D-Day landings The Normandy landings were the landing operations and associated airborne operations on 6 June 1944 of the Allied invasion of Normandy in Operation Overlord during the Second World War. Codenamed Operation Neptune and often referred to as ...

as it housed sixteen pumps for the

PLUTO Pluto (minor-planet designation: 134340 Pluto) is a dwarf planet in the Kuiper belt, a ring of Trans-Neptunian object, bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune. It is the ninth-largest and tenth-most-massive known object to directly orbit the Su ...

(Pipe Line Under The Ocean) operation to keep the Allied forces supplied with fuel. Each of the 16 pumps supplied of fuel per day at a pressure of . In the 1950s the site was used to house the Isle of Wight Zoo, which was renamed as the Wildheart Animal Sanctuary in 2021.

References

Publications

* Moore, David, 2010. ''The East Wight Defences'', Solent Papers Number 10, David Moore, Gosport.

External links

Victorian Forts data sheet for Sandown (Granite) Fort

Victorian Forts data sheet for Sandown Barrack Battery
{{Palmerston Forts on the Isle of Wight Forts on the Isle of Wight Palmerston Forts Government buildings completed in 1864 Military installations established in 1864 1864 establishments in England