Exploring Kent's Past

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Monument details

Summary

The Tenaille of the Citadel is located to the south of the complex and draw a hard straight line along the crest of the ridge to the south. They were completed, along with the works on the main ditch early in the 19th century and appear to have been completed with a brick revetment by 1810. (location accurate to the nearest 1m based on available information)

Monument Types

• BASTION OUTWORK (Demolished, Post Medieval - 1805 AD? to 1890 AD?)

Full description

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The Tenaille of the Citadel is located to the south of the complex and draw a hard straight line along the crest of the ridge to the south. They were completed, along with the works on the main ditch early in the 19th century and appear to have been completed with a brick revetment by 1810.

The tenaille was a long rectangular ‘island’, between twin ditches, on which were concentrated defences to protect the entire south face of the Citadel. The ditches were badly damaged during construction of South Front Battery in the last years of the 19th century; the outer ditch was removed for three-quarters of the original length and the tenaille cut away to leave a new sloping profile on the south. The greater part of the tenaille was formed into an earthwork, carefully profiled into a banquette for infantry defence of the steep slope of the Heights on the south. However, at the western end, a cross ditch separated part of it to form a demi-bastion which could be defended independently, at both terreplein level via banquettes facing south, east and west, and at ditch level, by gunrooms known as the Short Casemates.

There were three points of access to the tenaille. The Napoleonic route was from a newel stair shaft inside the south-west part of the Citadel. A second route, established during the 1850s/60s phase, came through the rampart south of the Officers’ Quarters, in a short vaulted passage to a defensible gate in the scarp revetment. A third and later route was formed by a swing bridge with its pivot on the demi-bastion, located in a setback on the counterscarp of the inner ditch immediately adjacent to the cross ditch. (1)

A plan dating to 1811 which details the extent of the Napoleonic works which were undertaken at the Citadel, shows this structure. (2)

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 English Heritage, 2004, The Western Heights, Dover, Kent: Report No. 2: The Citadel (Unpublished document).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

<2> Major W H Ford, Royal Engineers, 1811, Plan Shewing the Appropriation of the Ordnance Lands on the Western Heights Dover 1811 (Map). SKE51523.

Sources and further reading

Related records