Crownhill Fort

En un regard

Le château en bref

Set on a hill north of Plymouth, Crownhill Fort is the largest and most important of the land forts built in the 1860s to cover Devonport Dockyard against an attack from inland. It belongs to the family of fortifications of the 1859 Royal Commission, the works ironically nicknamed "Palmerston's follies". From the outside the fort can barely be made out: a vast grassed glacis conceals a seven-sided enclosure ringed by a rock-cut ditch, swept by the fire of multi-level caponiers. Inside lie vaulted barracks, countermine galleries, artillery casemates and emplacements for Moncrieff disappearing guns. After more than a century of military occupation, from the mobilisation depot of 1914 to the preparations for D-Day in 1944, the site was transferred in 1987 to the Landmark Trust, which has restored it to its late-Victorian state. It is today the only fort of this Plymouth network to be maintained and open to the public, on open days with guided tours and gun firings; the former officers' quarters house holiday accommodation for eight people, while other buildings are home to small businesses.