Fort Bridgewoods

En un regard

Le château en bref

Fort Bridgewoods was part of the ring of land fortifications built in the late 19th century around Chatham to protect the Royal Navy dockyard on the Medway. Located south of Rochester, beside the old Maidstone road, it belonged to the group of southern forts (Borstal, Bridgewoods, Horsted, Luton) built by convicts from the nearby Borstal prison and linked to one another by a military railway. Hexagonal in plan and surrounded by a dry ditch flanked by counterscarp galleries, it housed beneath its earth ramparts one row of accommodation casemates and another of magazines. Its main interest lies in its 20th-century history: a barracks in 1914-1918, then a War Office radio interception station from 1926, it was one of the first posts to regularly pick up messages encrypted with Enigma, which were passed on to the codebreakers at Bletchley Park. It later served as an anti-aircraft headquarters and then as a civil defence centre during the Cold War. Sold to a developer in 1975, the fort was demolished and its ditches filled in; the site is now used for logistics. Only two concrete abutments of the entrance remain visible, while buried remains (ditch revetments, casemate bases) may survive.