Restoration of one of barrack rooms into Victorian appearance.
Camera: Contax RTSII + Carl Zeiss f2.8 Distagon Lens + TLA30 Flash
For more 35mm Archive photographs of Crownhill Fort please click here:
www.jhluxton.com/The-35mm-Film-Archive/Devon/Crownhill-Fo...
Crownhill Fort is one of ten Forts and Batteries built in the 1860s to defend Plymouth’s naval base from a French attack following Lord Palmerston’s review of the fixed defences of the UK.
The Royal Commission to Consider the Defences of the United Kingdom proposed a substantial refortifying of the major naval ports, upgrading existing sea defences and building a new series of defences to repel a landward attack similar to that which captured Sevastopol in 1855.
Crownhill Fort and several of its contemporaries were designed by Captain Edmund du Cane, a Royal Engineer who spent several years designing penal colonies in Australia. His designs borrowed heavily from earlier landward defences and were designed to counter the threat from the new generation of artillery that had rendered the sea defences ineffective. A civilian contractor was appointed to build Crownhill Fort and in the early stages of construction 2000 men were employed to form the massive earthworks on which the Fort buildings are constructed.
Lord Palmerston died in 1865 before construction of any of the defences (latterly named Palmerston Forts or Palmerston Follies by the press) completed. Napoleon III was exiled in 1870 so had the threat from France been credible the possibility of a French attack was minimal by the time the last stone was laid at Crownhill Fort in 1872.
Unlike other Palmerstonian Forts Crownhill was used by the military until 1985, as a training venue in the latter part of the 19th century and as a recruitment and mobilisation depot in the First World War.
In 1922 the Royal Corps of Signals was established at Crownhill. In the Second World War substantial alterations were made to the Fort buildings to accommodate Allied troops and to prepare and store equipment for the D Day landings in 1944.
In the 1980s Crownhill Fort was occupied by 59 Commando Squadron Royal Engineers who provided logistical support to the Falklands Campaign.
Once this conflict came to an end Crownhill Fort was declared surplus to requirements and over a century of military usage came to an end in 1986.
The Landmark Trust acquired Crownhill Fort in 1987 and have undertaken major work to restore the site to its late Victorian layout.
An apartment in the former Officers Quarters is available to let for holidays and many of the former military buildings are let to a community of small businesses thus providing a source of income to cover the cost of repairs and maintenance.
Crownhill Fort is open to the public on selected days.
