Napoleonic Fort, Hoo Island. The River Medway, Kent.

On the River Medway, there are two Palmerston Forts sitting on ‘islands’ on either side of Pinup Reach, a narrow channel that guards the approach to the Medway Ports of Chatham, Gillingham and Rochester. One of those is Hoo Fort on Hoo Island. The island has a history that includes a military fort, a nunnery, and a Saxon division. The fort is only accessible by boat. This 19th-century military installation was constructed in the 1860s in response to the 1859 Royal Commission's recommendations to defend the UK from a possible French invasion.

 

Originally designed for two tiers of guns mounted in a circle, with a boom strung between Hoo Fort and Fort Darnet, there were many problems with subsidence, and after extensive cost overruns, the forts were completed in 1871 with a single tier of eleven 9-inch rifled muzzle-loading guns, and no boom. Each gun was mounted in an individual casemate with heavily armoured firing port, The forts were decommissioned before the First World War. In the Second World War, the fort was used as an observation post, with platforms and pillboxes built on top. The fort is still in fair condition, it remained in MOD hands for many years but is now owned by Medway Ports.