Overview
Forder Battery was a sixteen-gun Palmerston fort intended to close the north-eastern land approach to Devonport Dockyard. Edmund Du Cane's design linked by military road and overlapping fire to Fort Austin and Bowden Fort; later housing removed much of it, but magazines and gun positions preserve the defensive plan.
Who built and held it
Captain Edmund Du Cane designed Forder after the 1859 Royal Commission. George Baker and Company undertook construction and the Royal Engineers finished the work for the War Department.
Attack, change and use
The fort was planned for sixteen guns. By 1893 it carried heavy rifled and smooth-bore weapons, while a military road and shared fields of fire connected it with Fort Austin and Bowden Fort.
What survives
Disarmament followed obsolescence in the early twentieth century, and housing later covered much of the fort. Some expense magazines and former gun positions remain among the redevelopment.
Why it mattered
Forder reveals how Plymouth's forts were laid out as a connected landward barrier rather than isolated monuments, protecting the Royal Navy's dockyard from an army approaching from inland.
History checked 16 August 2026 against the named sources below.
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