Fort Borstal

En un regard

Le château en bref

Fort Borstal occupies the ridge of the Nashenden Valley, south-west of Rochester, from where it commanded a wide stretch of the Medway valley. It belongs to the ring of forts designed after the Royal Commission of 1859-1860 to cover the Chatham naval dockyard from landward attack. Its construction is inseparable from the nearby Borstal prison, opened in 1874 to house the convicts employed on the works; this prison later gave its name to the "borstal" system for the reform of young offenders. The fort has an irregular pentagonal plan: it is essentially an earthwork battery with a largely concrete interior, surrounded by a ditch whose angles are defended by counterscarp galleries. Barely completed in the mid-1890s, it had already been overtaken by advances in artillery. A barracks and depot in 1914-1918, then an anti-aircraft battery during the Second World War, it passed in 1961 to the Home Office, which used it as a store and piggery for the neighbouring penal institution, before it was sold to private owners. A scheduled monument, it is now private property and not open to the public.