Fort Stamford

Fort Stamford stands on a ridge sixteen metres above the water, between Jennycliffe Bay and Hooe Lake. Built in the 1860s as part of Lord Palmerston’s coastal-defence plan, it was one of the Royal Commission forts intended to protect Devonport Dockyard. The War Office chose Captain Edmund Du Cane to design the five-sided polygonal fort, and George Roach & Company completed the work. A dry ditch encircled the ramparts, with caponiers and a gallery to stop attackers. A military road linked the fort to its neighbour, Staddon Fort, so troops and guns could move quickly. The fort was meant to hold twenty guns and six mortars, but by 1893 only eight were mounted. Its heaviest pieces were two 10-inch rifled muzzle-loaders and a single 7-inch breech-loader. The garrison lived in a two-storey barrack block arranged in thirteen casemates, housing two hundred soldiers. After the turn of the century the fort became useless for defence and was stripped of its artillery in 1904. The War Office sold the site in 1963, and it now shelters caravans, a fitness club and private flats. Visitors walk the dry ditch and climb the ramparts for views across the Cattewater and the naval dockyard beyond. The converted casemates form modern homes, while the parade ground hosts a gym. The scheduled monument still shows the original gun positions and the military road to Staddon. On clear days the sea horizon and the city skyline meet at the fort’s edge. The place keeps the memory of 19th-century defence plans alive in its stone and earthworks.