The Rear Defence Walls of New Tavern Fort, Gravesend, 1795

THE REAR DEFENCE WALLS OF NEW TA VERN FORT, GRAVESEND, 1795 VICTOR T.C. SMITH, B.A., F.S.A. INTRODUCTION The several sections of brick wall to the rear and south flank of New Tavern Fort at Gravesend are the remnants of measures taken more than a decade after the original construction of the fort in the early 1780s to complete a circuit of close protection for this defensive position. In the last twelve years, however, these structures have several times been threatened by the possibility of demolition as a consequence of proposals for revision of the road traffic system for Gravesend. Although this threat has abated for the present, future pressure on the road system of the area may again place these structures at risk. The purpose of this paper is to draw attention to the historical significance of these parts of the fort and to highlight the presence of an early example of a caponier, which was a device for the flank defence of ditches. THE ORIGINS AND EARLY DEVELOPMENT OF NEW TAVERN FORT A new fort at Gravesend to strengthen the defences of the river Thames against an enemy naval attack was proposed and designed by Captain Thomas Hyde-Page during a French invasion scare of 1778. 1 The site chosen for this was to the east of the earlier Gravesend Blockhouse, on ground around the New Tavern inn. The latter occupied a building which had been the medieval Milton Chantry. When the scheme was actually carried forward in the first years of the 1780s, the Chantry was incorporated and converted into a barrack for the garrison. 1 Plan in BL K. Top. XVII. 16b and papers for 1778 in PRO WO ssn65. 283 VICTOR T.C. SMITH The purpose of the fort was to supplement the volume of artillery fire available from the Gravesend Blockhouse by the provision of more guns to produce a more intensive cross-fire in the river with Tilbury Fort on the Essex shore. Its irregular zigzag plan had been determined by the need to deploy guns to the positions from which to obtain the best angles for firing on to the river in a more aggressive posture of defence than had been possible from the Blockhouse. Fifteen heavy guns were mounted to fire through embrasures in an earthem rampart which was fronted by an unrevetted ditch. The fort had not been built to incorporate a capacity for all-round defence and its rear was practically open. A fence initially erected there had evidently been mainly intended to define the boundary of Ordnance property. This may have been provided in response to an instruction of 30th September, 1783, from the Master General of Ordnance, requiring all garrison engineers to enclose their works with a 'proper railing' against illegal intrusion and straying cattle.2 At this date there were still fields and grazing lands close to New Tavern Fort. THE BUILDING OF THE DEFENCE WALLS This situation of weakness was tolerated until the emergence of a revived possibility of invasion during the opening years of the French Revolutionary Wars. A recapitulation of expenditure on the Thames defences in 1795 included the sum of £1,702 14s. 5¾d. for 'Building a wall and erecting a Palisade Fence to the Works at New Tavem'.3 The wall is shown on a plan of the same year4 (Fig. 1) as a discontinuous line erected in the spaces between buildings along the rear of the fort. It was presumably intended that the intervening buildings could be adapted for defence in an emergency. The palisade mentioned in the recapitulation can only have been a timber obstacle fence set in the ditch of the fort itself. This had also been a feature of the original project for the fort of 1778. By enclosing the position in this way it was given some degree of protection against any attempt by a landing party to capture the fort and silence its guns by coup de main. However, it could only have been effective against a small-scale assault by infantry. The defence wall was constructed of yellow brick and was pierced at various points by loop-holes for small-arms defence by the 'Brown Bess' 2 R.E. Letter Books (Gravesend), 1783-90. 3 Ibid., 1815-16. 4 PRO MR 1192. 284 N 00 Ut .. : ·: :_ :_ -:,:·. _= ·.. .: :::_·-/>/<·J>.=􀀤 􀀥-- 􀀦: \ 􀀧-- -: -: .-:\:-.-. ·:;·: : ·:• : \ ·: ... =-- · ::·. BLOCKHOUSE - Gravesend Blockhouse and NewTavern Fort 1795 O 􀀃IT :"_ \\·.: : . .. ·;. >-􀀏 =--· ·. : : ·_.· N t Fig. I. A simplified plan of the Gravesend Blockhouse and New Tavern Fort in 1795. The rear defence wall and caponier are arrowed. 􀀊 I (") til 􀀉 i 􀀋 -􀀈 'Cl VI VICTOR T.C. SMITH musket. There was an earthen firing step behind, with a short talus to the interior surface of the fort. The stretch of wall running south from the Royal Engineeer's Quarters had a gateway at its centre, and was indented to allow a measure of enfilade fire from its flanks and formed a type of bastion at its southern extremity, before it turned eastward to join with an elongated rectangular walled enclosure at the southern end of the ditch of the fort. The northern of the walls of the latter was loop-holed to cover the ditch with the fire of musketry. Those stretches of the front earthern ramparts of the fort not occupied by gun embrasures also had fire-steps for the overbank firing of muskets to reinforce the obstacle of the ditch and its palisade against frontal assault. However, as the urban development of Gravesend spread towards the rear and flank of the fort from the early nineteenth century, and Milton Place became built-up (Pl. I), the effectiveness of the rear defence wall gradually reduced. Indeed, by 1843, in military discussion of a proposal from ecclesiastical authorities for a new church to be built two hundred metres to the south of the fort (Holy Trinity Church, built 1844/45), it was explicitly stated that a self-defence capability against a landing party might practically be given up.5 Yet, in the 1850s, a further length of wall was erected just to the south of Milton Chantry to fill a gap resulting from the purchase and demolition of the Rectory House, a civilian property on the line of the rear perimeter.6 Although the gun batteries of the fort were modernised on several later occasions and formed an active part of the Thames defences into the early years of the twentieth century, the rear defence wall gradually became seen as more of a security barrier against unauthorised ingress and egress and to inhibit external theft from military property. The fort was disarmed in 1909 but continued to be occupied by soldiers through the First World War and until the mid-1920s when the site became surplus to military requirements. It was bought from the Crown by the Corporation of Gravesend in 1930 and laid out as a public garden, known as Fort Gardens, opened in 1932. Restoration of the historical features of the fort, by volunteers of the New Tavern Fort Project in partnership with Gravesham Borough Council, began in 1975. The fort in general was awarded Scheduled Monument status in 1995. 5 R.E. Letter Books (Gravesend), 1843-50. 6 PRO WO 55/776 and R.E. Letter Books (Gravesend), 1843-50. 286 REAR DEFENCE WALLS, NEW TAVERN FORT, GRAVESEND, 1795 287 vi 0 ,.., 00 '- 0 􀀄 CJ ·;;: 􀀅 0 0. E CJ E 0 u VICTOR T.C. SMITH EXT ANT REMAINS (Fig. 2) The present incomplete nature of wall survival is partly the result of works for the adaptation of the fort to form the Fort Gardens and partly a consequence of demolitions following blast damage from a V2 rocket which fell and exploded on the western side of Milton Place during the Second World War. The extant remains are now listed sequentially from north to south: (A) A section of wall 8.80 m. long and 3.5 m. high at the point where Milton Place becomes Commercial Place. Its 50 cm. thickness is pierced with eight vertical loop-holes which enfiladed the east-west road (later called The Terrace) from the then centre of Gravesend. Each loop-hole presents as a narrow (45 x 8 cm.) slit through the external face of the wall, enlarging in the interior face to allow a musket to be aimed within a planned arc of fire. The rear of this wall was eventually enclosed within a later building added to the fort when the loop-holes were blocked on their insides. The wall is generally in a good state of preservation. There may be buried archaeological traces of further stretches of wall between this and Milton Chantry. (B) The remnant of the bastion-shaped southern extremity of the rear wall. This is in the form of two 18 m. and 9 m. stretches of the wall which had been cut off and breached in 1930-32 for the installation of a pair of wrought iron ornamental gates for the Fort Gardens. It is possible that archaeological evidence of the inset section of the wall exists under the flower beds immediately to the north of this. (C) The 50 cm. thick parallel walls which closed the southern end of the fort ditch and form the long sides of a rectangular walled enclosure (Pl. II). This is 26 m. long and 4.50 m. wide, is open to the sky and entered from the interior of the fort. The south long wall and eastern end wall were made blank. The north-facing long wall was pierced by 15 musketry loop-holes which looked out along the ditch of the fort. The bottoms of the loop-holes are almost level with the present interior surface of the feature because of the raising of the ground subsequent to original construction. This surface has a covering of later concrete slabs. The loop-holes have an enlarged Portland Stone-faced splay in the external face and a narrow aperture in the inside face of the wall. Originally, the ground surface must have been significantly lower to allow a suitable height for soldiers to stand to fire their muskets through the loop-holes. The fortuitous discovery in 1993 of an informally inscribed brick bearing the date 1795 in the outer face of the eastern end wall has confirmed the date of construction. This brick also bore the initials WB which may be those of the builder or chief bricklayer. The wall also contains two later but eroded sandstone War Department boundary markers. This feature is sometimes referred to in twentieth-century plans as a 288 00N \0 ' ' I r---., I􀀍 ---􀀎I : I ______ J I I L-,I: ..:.r•-------...!,, 􀀏 f LJ;::􀀉:---=--- 􀀓􀀔 ,, ... w ifi II ! IOOFT 1 I l 30M C ',, 04'4f -,__ I IJr N 􀀆IIC14t ';,· - - l-ic􀀇 --, -- ' ' ' Fig. 2. Plan of the rear of New Tavern Fort in 1996. Extant defence walls are in heavy line and possible archaeological traces in heavy broken line. 􀀕 􀀁 i _§ 􀀖 􀀗 -􀀐..... __, u,\0 u.J I­ <( ..J 0.. VICTOR T.C. SMITH 290 REAR DEFENCE WALLS, NEW TAVERN FORT, GRAVESEND, 1795 'sally port'. There are no external traces of there ever having been an opening. Similarly, small-scale investigations within the parallel walls revealed no evidence of a sally port but did indicate that there had been a target post behind the centre of the end wall from the evident use of the interior as a firing range. Impacted lead bullets of possible late nineteenth-century date were found embedded in the bricks. Wall slots and a roof line of a gabled lean-to structure on the inside of the western end of the north wall, near the entrance to the enclosure, might be traces of a storage cupboard for this range or it may date from the original construction. The map of 1795 described this feature as a 'wall with crenaux'7 which is a reference to the presence of loop-holes. A document of 1866 refers to it as a caponier.8 DISCUSSION Viewed as a whole, the self-defence capability of the fort against a landing party had never been formidable. Indeed, it is hard not to conclude that from the outset, the rear defence wall had been as much about securing the interior of the fort against unauthorised access during peacetime as it was about defence against a landing party in war. The building of a loop-holed wall to close the rear of a battery or fort was an unremarkable development during this period, but it did form part of the fort and the value of its extant remains and archaeological potential need to be recognised. These walls are also important as the only remaining part of the defences of the original New Tavern Fort. Moreover, the walls closing the south end of the ditch of the fort were an early, if primitive, example of a caponier, a device which is better known in more developed and roofed form as integral to an evolving new form of defence known as 'polygonal' fortification. At New Tavern Fort, however, it was a piecemeal addition. Such devices were also added to the ditches of Dover Castle at about the same date. Although the New Tavern feature was not a milestone in the evolution of British defence methods and did not presage a new system, it does merit reporting as a previously unnoticed example of a defensive form to be considered alongside the others being constructed in various places during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. 1 Ibid., note 4. 8 R.E. Letter Books (Gravesend), 1866-69. 291 VICTOR T.C. SMITH THE ILLUSTRATIONS Figs. I and 2 were drawn by the writer, based on a plan in PRO MR 1192 and an Ordnance Survey plan, respectively. Plate I is copied from part of a contemporary drawing in the photographic archive of Gravesend Library and Plate II is a photograph taken by the writer. 292