Fort Bridgewoods

The War Office obtained the land around 1860 after a national review called for stronger protection around Chatham. Money shortages delayed the work until about 1890, when prisoners provided much of the labour; Medway Council dates the completed fort to 1892. Soldiers occupied it only from time to time before the First World War.

The six-sided earth fort had a dry ditch, covered firing rooms, living rooms, ammunition stores and movable field guns rather than permanent heavy weapons. A narrow railway carried materials and guarded prisoners to the works. Engineers once blew up a corner during an exercise. It became barracks in the First World War, then a local emergency headquarters in 1938. A concrete command building followed in 1942 for the Home Guard, aircraft watchers, emergency workers and a light gun crew. In the 1950s it was prepared as a control centre after a possible nuclear attack.

Later owners demolished and levelled the fort, filled its ditch and removed the outer earthwork. Two concrete supports at the old entrance are the only clear remains above ground. A 2003 inspection found part of the northern ditch and a buried concrete feature about 3.2 metres below the present surface; lower rooms, firing galleries and passages may also remain under the filled ground.

Bridgewoods belonged to the last permanent ring of land forts built in Britain and helped keep an attacker about two miles from Chatham's vital dockyard. Its repeated reuse traces changing fears from invading armies, through air attack, to nuclear war. Its near-total loss also shows the consequence of selling a major military site without protection: the story now depends largely on records and buried remains.