Slough Fort

En un regard

Le château en bref

Slough Fort is a small Victorian artillery fort at Allhallows-on-Sea, on the northern shore of the Hoo Peninsula, in Kent. Completed in 1867 following the recommendations of the 1860 Royal Commission, it guarded the only practicable landing point along some fifteen miles of Thames shoreline between Cliffe and Grain. The fort has a D-shaped plan: seven casemates in an arc facing the river, protected by a ditch, and barrack rooms around a small courtyard. Between 1889 and 1891, two concrete wing batteries received hydropneumatic disappearing guns, a rare surviving example of this technique; one of the emplacements survives intact. Abandoned by the army in 1920, sold in 1929 to house a small zoo and saved from demolition by the cost of pulling it down, it has housed stables and a riding school since the 1960s, with the casemates serving as loose boxes. The core of the fort is listed Grade II* and its wing batteries have been a scheduled monument since 2009. An interpretation trail runs along the outer batteries, while the main body remains private.