En un regard
Le château en bref
Bowden Battery, also known as Bowden Fort, is a Victorian artillery battery north-east of Plymouth, on high ground overlooking the south side of the Forder Valley. It belongs to the city's North Eastern Defences, one of the works begun after the 1859 report of the Royal Commission. The programme was meant to protect Devonport Dockyard from a French attack coming from inland. Built between 1863 and 1868 to designs by Edmund Du Cane, it was linked by a military road to Crownhill Fort, Forder Battery and Eggbuckland Keep. It was intended to command the Forder Valley, the north face of Forder Battery and the rear of Crownhill Fort. The plan called for twelve guns in open battery and three mortars. By 1893 only six guns were mounted on the ramparts and two in the guardhouse, and the two mortar batteries that were built never received any weapons. Obsolete by the early 20th century, the battery was disarmed and then sold by the War Office to the City of Plymouth before 1960. It remains remarkably complete: a four-sided enclosure on steep natural slopes, revetted earth ramparts, ditches, a gateway with drawbridge pulleys and chains, a partly sunken guardhouse, magazines, musketry galleries and a well-preserved glacis. Boundary stones marked "WD" (War Department) still mark out the former military land. The site is now occupied by a garden centre, and the gorge has been filled in to make a car park.