Efford Fort

En un regard

Le château en bref

Perched on a hill overlooking the Plym estuary and east Plymouth, Efford Fort belongs to the ring of land forts built in the 1860s to shield Devonport Dockyard from an attack from inland. It formed the right-hand end of the north-eastern line, facing the valleys that run down to the Plym. The work follows a polygonal plan enclosed by rock-cut ditches and a glacis. Beneath its ramparts lie vaulted casemates able to house five officers and more than a hundred men, while a fortified guardhouse secures the gorge. Some twenty guns occupied the terreplein, supplemented by Haxo casemates and a casemated battery on the south flank. A few years after the fort, an earthwork emplacement for howitzers, the Efford Emplacement, was added, linked to the rest of the defences by a masonry gallery. Downgraded to an ammunition depot during the Second World War, the site has seen remarkably little demolition: all its barrack casemates survive. Now overgrown and closed to the public, it can still be made out from the surrounding green spaces, and the emplacement's postern tunnel even serves as a passage for walkers.