Harwich Redoubt

En un regard

Le château en bref

Set on a slight rise in the east of the Harwich peninsula, just beyond the old town gate, the Harwich Redoubt is a circular artillery fort built in the early 19th century, when England feared a landing by Napoleon's armies. Together with Landguard Fort, on the other side of the Stour and Orwell estuary, it crossed its fire over the harbour entrance, one of the strategic anchorages of the east coast. The work, of brick with granite facings, forms a ring about sixty metres in diameter encircled by a deep dry ditch. Around a central courtyard, eighteen vaulted casemates housed magazines, a kitchen and living quarters, while the upper platform originally carried ten guns. Designed to withstand a long siege, the fort never fired a shot at an enemy. Modernised several times in the 19th century, then converted into barracks, a detention centre during the Second World War and a civil defence centre during the Cold War, it was abandoned at the end of the 1950s. Since 1969, volunteers of the Harwich Society have restored it and opened it to the public as a museum, with exhibitions, weapons and summer re-enactments. The site is a scheduled monument and a Grade II* listed building.