Fort Bridgewoods

Fort Bridgewoods stands on the edge of Rochester in the Medway district, beside the old Rochester–Maidstone road. It was bought by the War Office in about 1860 as one of a ring of forts meant to guard the Royal Dockyard at Chatham. Money ran short, so only five big forts and two small earthen redoubts were built. Work began in 1890 with convict labour, even though France had become an ally and Germany now seemed the likely foe. The fort was built of earth with a deep dry moat that followed the lie of the land. Inside the earthen walls were magazines and living quarters, while above the village of Borstal a large prison housed the workforce. The fort was linked to four other forts by a 457 mm narrow-gauge railway called the Eastern Defences Railway. Barges brought building materials up the River Medway to Borstal quay, then a Handyside locomotive winched wagons up the steep slope to the site. Prisoners travelled in locked carriages guarded by warders. After the fort was finished it saw little use until the late 1930s, when radar trials turned it into a headquarters for anti-aircraft guns in the Thames Estuary. In the early 1950s a protected bunker was added for the nuclear age, but the site was soon handed to Civil Defence and later became a regional headquarters. Today the fort is mostly gone. A Royal Mail depot covers part of the ground, and a vending company occupies another section. Yet the line of the old railway can still be seen where it curves away from City Way and Marconi Way. The dry moat and earthen ramparts blend into the surrounding slope, marking the spot where Victorian engineers once planned to stop an invasion that never came.