Excavations at Form Amherst

ArticlesIssue 110

1 Dec

Written By Jacob Scott

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By Roger Hornsby and Richard Taylor

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Fig 1: Excavations at Fort Amherst 2018

Above

Fig 2: The Chatham Lines showing Spur Battery to the southwest c.1810

Right

Fig 3: 1879 map showing SB17 excavation targets on Spur Battery

Background

A brief introduction to the reason for the fortifications starts with the use of a Medway Reach as a mooring for out of commission Royal Navy ships in the mid-16th century, keeping the narrow Thames area at Deptford Dockyard clear.

Soon the facilities to store gear for the moored vessels expanded to become Chatham Dockyard.

The Dutch naval assault on the lower Medway, inflicting humiliating damage to ships at Chatham, in 1667 exposed the inadequacy of the defences. Two new forts were rapidly built to guard the river and then Chatham area Medway defences followed to protect the Naval Dockyard from the landward side. Starting with a cleared area to the east as a ‘Field of Fire’, the remains of which are the Great Lines by the mid-18th century a defensive ditch and ramparts had been built. Considerable improvements followed; some to thwart the American, French and Spanish activities in the latter third of the 18th century but mostly at the beginning of the 19th century, during the Napoleonic Wars, that included additional fortification to both north and, at the south end, Fort Amherst.

This remodelling of the south-east corner expanded Prince William’s Bastion by adding Spur Battery, then forming a ditch on the western side so this area became an ‘outwork’ (fig 2). This effective separation from the Fort followed the current defensive practice. Soon rapid advances in artillery range in the early 19th century made these defences ineffective, so generating the ring of “Palmerston Forts” to the east of the Medway towns gave the Dockyard effective protection.

In 1980 Fort Amherst was purchased from the MoD by the Fort Amherst and Lines Trust and public open days began; before that it had been ‘Government Property’. There are well recorded uses made of the area during both the world wars; administrative within existing underground chambers and probably anti-aircraft measures. Following WWII, neglect allowed undergrowth to flourish. The Royal School of Military Engineering (RSME) Brompton facilities are spread northwards from Fort

Amherst. These remain within the Chatham Lines, albeit what was Kitchener Barracks is now a private housing development. Apart from that, the Garrison Church, married quarters and some sports facilities the RSME continues to link to the Fort within the Lines.

Fort Amherst has been described by English Heritage as the most complete Napoleonic fortification in Britain and as such has great national historical significance.

Generally, there is public access to most of the ‘open to the sky’ areas of the Fort but presently not to Spur Battery and some adjacent fortifications.

Excavations 2016–18 at Spur Battery

There is a proposal to adapt an area, probably remnants of Prince of Wales’ Bastion that is incorporated into Spur Battery, that ramps down between two revetted walls to a caponier, as an open-air auditorium. The Shorne Woods Archaeology

Group (SWAG) was invited to investigate this area in September 2016 and found a series of cross walls that elucidated the constantly evolving defences on Spur Battery. The Medway Council and HLF funded ‘Command of the Heights’ project will see the ‘ampitheatre’ space on Spur Battery transformed into an open-air auditorium.

SWAG returned in 2017, under the site director Andrew Mayfield, as part of the Dig Deep community archaeology initiative at Fort Amherst, funded by Medway Council and the HLF, to investigate the scrub-covered area to the east of the proposed ‘amphitheatre’ of the courtyard casemate. SWAG was expecting to find traces of buildings that are indicated on plans (fig 3) dated later than those of the ‘outwork’. None were found, though evidence for the construction of the Spur Battery platform using vast quantities of chalk rubble and various sandy infills were detected (figs 4 & 5).

Left

Fig 4: Various backfills visible as part of Spur platform make-up

Above

Fig 5: Various backfills visible over casemate structure of Spur Battery

In addition to the discovery of the platform make-up, other features were located and cleaned, including a probable WWII foxhole, original gun emplacement positions and possible evidence of a retaining wall associated with an earthen ramp providing access to the earliest phase of Spur Battery (figs 6, 7

& 8). It soon became clear, via a combination of the excavations and the study of aerial photography, that the Royal Engineers probably levelled much of the Spur Battery platform surface, removing remnants of 19th-century internal buildings and structures in the process. However, many exciting artefacts were discovered, hinting at a rich and varied military use for over 200 years (figs 9 & 10).

Spent ammunition discoveries – the value of research

What did appear in 2017, mostly by metal detection in the surface layer of low growth, where 220 or so spent blank cartridges in a comparatively small area. At first sight, (and given the former MoD location), one might assume many of these blank cartridges are evidence of military exercises or wartime training. However, following much painstaking research, the reality is somewhat different.

The cartridges are likely to have been the result of private re- enactments or war games, the Trust management renting this securable and isolated outwork to those who participate in such activities. Unfortunately, there are no records of by whom, how and when this area was used save that there were no public displays and these hirings of the Spur Battery area ceased some five years or so ago. Presently the area has been cleared of most of the trees that covered much of the area until this year, presumably as part of the ‘amphitheatre’ works.

‘Blank ammunition’ is almost always a casing to suit the weapon’s chamber shape without any projectile and a reduced propellant charge to suit the action of the weapon. This “action” falls into two main categories, one being the simple need for a ‘bang’ that requires manual action to reload – breaking the weapon to insert a live round, lever or bolt action in conjunction with a charged magazine or mechanical action as in a revolver – that needs a simple cartridge as, apart from fitting the chamber and ease of ejection, there is little need for other than some gas tightness. The other form of ‘blank’ round is one that needs to operate the reload action of the weapon, so a form of choke attachment to the weapon is mostly needed to ensure enough force is generated on firing to operate the working parts.

Now, this type of blank round has to emulate the shape of its lethal counterpart to prevent ‘jamming’ as it cycles from the magazine to ejection. The only real difference between a ‘self-loading’ and an ‘automatic’ weapon is the former needs the trigger pulled each time to fire a single round; automatic will fire continuously once the trigger is pulled back until release, misfire or there are no more rounds to load.

Top left

Fig 6: Cleaned Spur gun emplacement looking east

Top right

Fig 7: Probable WWII fox-hole position constructed against east wall

Bottom right

Fig 8: Retaining wall associated with an earthen ramp providing access from the barrier ditch during earliest phase of Spur Battery’s use

Ammunition generally is described by calibre, and case length as these broad dimensions tend to indicate which weapons are chambered to use them. It is fair to assume that much ammunition is manufactured for use by nations’ armed forces, but there are thriving forms of target and hunting shooting activity that demand ammunition for a wide variety of weapons, from the arcane to the most up to date. There a few military chamber shapes have been long-lived – the Russian 7.62 taper rimmed 57mm, German

7.92 parallel rimless 57mm, British

7.70 (303) taper rimmed 56mm to name but three. Post-WWII alliances have introduced their small arms ammunition for use in the standard chambers incorporated in national weapon designs.

Headstamps are the details stamped into the base of the case – that part that has the cap or primer in the centre. They are generally manufacturers’ markings for that maker’s country and vary immensely in detail. Some of the blanks found at Fort Amherst are blank in every sense, having no markings whatsoever. The military use both headstamps and colours to indicate specific uses for a variety of specialised and up- graded rounds developed over time. Sadly there is little detail on ‘blank’ rounds, so identification has had to rely on that for lethal rounds.

Top left

Fig 9: Royal Welsh Fusilier tunic button

Top right

Fig 10: 20th Century toy soldier featuring a Vickers machine gun

Middle left

Fig 11: 0.303 British rounds

Middle right

Fig 12: 7.62 x 54mm - Russian 1891 round

Bottom left

Fig 13: 7.92 x 57mm German Mauser rounds

Bottom right

Fig 14: 7.62x 51mm Standard Nato 1957 rounds

Below

Fig 15: 1878 map showing SB18 excavation target on Spur Battery

Right

Fig 16: WWII fox-hole (darker vertical soil to left) position cut through Spur backfill platform

The cases collected from the tiny areas investigated within Spur Battery in October 2017 mostly appear to be post-1980, suggesting no armed forces training but ‘re- enactment’ by such groups. Of the cases collected only 64 are “UK MoD issue” and most of these can be dated from a 1991 supply of 7.62 x 51mm NATO blank rounds, the twilight years of the Self Loading Rifle. A quarter of the empty cases are “9 x 19” that have a vast range of weapons chambered for this ubiquitous round so no particular nation or alliance can be attributed to these blanks. There are sufficient grounds to suggest German, British and American WWII weapons have been used in re-enactments, be they solely for the entertainment of the participants or some cinematic need.

Current re-enactments suggest the ‘Redcoat and Brown Bess’ era of the Napoleonic Wars. These are much more audience-friendly through encampment to demonstrations of battle formations – the vestiges of which still grace the Queen’s Birthday Parade – and may be considered more appropriate to that period generating the need for the Fort Amherst and Chatham Lines as protection for the Naval Dockyard.

To summarise; there is evidence, in one of the remoter areas of the Fort, that 20th-century weaponry has fired blank ammunition probably for some form of re-enactment as the rounds seen represent mainly British, German and American chambering.

Unfortunately, no records seem to exist to reveal greater detail of such usage. At the very least a musket ball for the regulation musket of the era of the Fort’s construction was also unearthed.

A Nice Set of Latrines

SWAG returned in October 2018 under the Dig Deep banner to investigate an area immediately to the west of the courtyard casemate. SWAG was expecting to find traces of a building indicated on plans (fig 15). Unlike 2017, this time a building was very much in evidence, one that first appears as part of the construction of the courtyard casemates and is marked on a plan of 1813.

On subsequent maps the precise location of the structure varies in its depiction but, current thinking is that it was built as latrines from the outset. There may be evidence that it was rebuilt at some point resulting in the excavated building that correlates to the

1879 OS depiction in fig 15.

Excavations progressed throughout a two-week period and, in addition to a further WWII fox-hole discovered to the east of the casemate in a service trench for the proposed amphitheatre (fig 16), the main excavation gradually exposed a remarkably well-preserved buried structure. As backfill was removed and shoring applied to the walls, evidence for a multi-arched chamber with an attached access shaft, slowly emerged (fig 17). Excavations ceased at a depth of 2.0m without finding the base of the structure.

However, this depth did demonstrate a well-engineered structure employing curved buttresses to the inner corners and well-preserved arched brickwork figs 18, 19 & 20).

Descriptions of the Spur Battery hospital confirm the wards were in Prince William’s barracks (next door) but explicitly state that there were no internal latrines with patients having to go outside to these. The excavation structure is perhaps a little too far from this hospital building and is more likely to have been used by troops.

There is a possibility that the structure might link to the 1858 period of use of Spur Battery as a summer camp to help preserve the health of the garrison. Newspaper accounts describe how the Royal Engineers laid out the camp including a piped water supply, but there is no mention of latrines.

The Sanitary Commission condemned cesspit latrines in barracks in their report of 1861, and over the following years, these were replaced with water flushed versions connected to main sewers. The isolation of the excavated latrines may have seen the continued use of a drop arrangement and a large soakaway that would have been periodically emptied using the shaft revealed on site. The structure is demolished by the epoch 4 OS map (1919–1939).

In conclusion, the excavations of 2016–18 were a success (fig 21). Much has been learned about the construction of Spur Battery, its use and, of course, answered the age-old question of “where did the soldiers go to the toilet?” SWAG wishes to extend its gratitude to Medway Council, HLF, and the Trustees of Fort Amherst for enabling the excavations, Ben Levick for his encyclopaedic knowledge of Fort Amherst, Clive Mortley of Colman & James building contractors for his patience and understanding whilst excavation works were ongoing, and Peter Kendall of Historic England for his continued guidance and input.

Acknowledgements: Figs 1 and 21 courtesy of Dean Barkley

Fig 2 courtesy of Ben Levick Figs 3 and 15 courtesy of National Archives