Hoo Fort

En un regard

Le château en bref

Set on a low islet in the Medway marshes, facing its twin Fort Darnet, Hoo Fort belongs to the great generation of fortifications launched after the 1859 report of the Royal Commission on Defence, nicknamed "Palmerston's follies". Its task was to bar enemy ships sailing up the estuary from reaching Chatham Dockyard. It is a circular masonry battery: eleven radiating granite-faced casemates, closed by iron shields, surround a central concrete drum whose top formed a small parade ground. The original design, with two tiers of guns, had to be reduced to a single level because the marshy ground could not bear the weight of the artillery. Never engaged in combat, the fort was decommissioned before the First World War and then reused as an observation post in 1939-1945. Inaccessible on foot, it can be viewed from the Saxon Shore Way coastal path at Hoo.