Exploring Kent's Past

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Monument details

Summary

The first defences recorded on the western heights were constructed in between 1779 and 1787, though appears never to have been finished. Surveys of the unfinished defences dating to 1787 show that there were ramparts, ditches, berms, glacis and three loopholed guardhouses. These were all either demolished or remodelled during later pahses of works on the fort throughout the 19th century. (location accurate to the nearest 100m based on available information)

Monument Types

• DITCH (Post Medieval - 1779 AD? to 1805 AD?)
• FORT (Post Medieval - 1779 AD? to 1805 AD?)
• GUARDHOUSE (Demolished, Post Medieval - 1779 AD? to 1858 AD?)

Full description

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Taken from report:

The first defences recorded on the Western Heights were constructed with militia labour in 1779, during the American War, when the Board of Ordnance purchased a large area of the ridge (Akers 1886, 38). However, at this time only a small sum, £2100, is recorded as being spent on the Heights and three batteries guarding the harbour (North’s, Townshend’s and Amherst Batteries). The defences on the Heights could only have been temporary fieldworks, comprising small unrevetted earthworks for infantry and artillery, capable of temporary resistance against a land assault. Nevertheless, this modest plan was soon transformed into an ambitious scheme for more substantial fortifications, combining both permanent and temporary elements. Their design, by the engineer officer Lieutenant Thomas Hyde Page, is revealed on a plan dated 1784 which shows a large bastioned fortification spanning the western end of the Heights, the earliest representation of the main work which was to become the Citadel Other minor works are shown along the ridge.

A start had been made on the south-west bastion of this work in 1782, by order of the Master General of the Ordnance, the Duke of Richmond. It is apparent that the outline of the whole trace was established by the end of the war in 1783 despite the fact that, in February 1782, the 1st Assistant Engineer in Dover, a Mr Bigges, was paying the labourers himself for want of money from the military authorities. On the inside of the work, three guardhouses were completed, each provided with loopholes for independent and mutual defence. The state of the works becomes clear in 1787 when the Commanding Royal Engineer (CRE) at Dover wrote to the Master General noting that ‘Lieutenant Hay reports that the Works are in a very unfinished state, nevertheless that he has traced their general outline and marked them on the survey’. Two copies of Lieutenant Hay’s survey have survived, showing the plan of the ‘Main Work’ with its three guardhouses, the whole taking up some 24 acres. So it seems that work slowed but did not necessarily stop in 1783 and received greater impetus following resumption of hostilities with France in 1793. In 1795 there was barrack accommodation for 60 men - probably in the loopholed guardhouses built earlier. The modest sum of £4885 4s 4¾d had been spent on the Heights by 1796 and though we have no idea what this sum was spent on, it probably went towards Lieutenant Page’s original scheme.(1)

Survey plan by Lieutenant Lewis Hay showing the defences built on the Western Heights, dated 1787 (2) and a slightly earlier plan dating to 1784 shows much the same detail (3)

Further information about the early history and development of the citadel is available inf the conservation framework by Luv Gibbs. (4)

<1> English Heritage, 2004, The Western Heights, Dover, Kent: Report No. 2: The Citadel (Unpublished document). SKE17690.

<2> Lieutenant Lewis Hay, 1787, Plan of the Western Heights dating to 1787 showing the defences built on high ground (Map). SKE51520.

<3> Lieutenant Thomas Hyde Page, 1784, Plan showing field works and Defences in Dover (Map). SKE51521.

<4> Liv Gibbs, 2012, Built Heritage Conservation Framework for Dover Western Heights (Unpublished document). SKE17708.

Sources and further reading

Related records