Exploring Kent's Past

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Monument details

Summary

In each of the two re-entrant angles on the western part of the Citadel trace, a group of six Napoleonic casemates provided both ditch defence and barracks, to a common design quite different from the Long Casemates. From the mid-19th century and probably from the Napoleonic period, these were referred to as the Left Wing and Right Wing Casemates. In 1858, they were called collectively the West Face Casemates. Each group comprised two sets of three casemates, with short passages for communication between the sets. (location accurate to the nearest 1m based on available information)

Monument Types

• ABLUTIONS BLOCK (Disused, Post Medieval to Modern - 1808 AD? to 1945 AD?)
• CASEMATE (Disused, Post Medieval to Modern - 1808 AD? to 1945 AD?)
• COOKHOUSE (Disused, Post Medieval to Modern - 1808 AD? to 1945 AD?)

Full description

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Summarised from report:

In each of the two re-entrant angles on the western part of the Citadel trace, a group of six Napoleonic casemates provided both ditch defence and barracks, to a common design quite different from the Long Casemates. From the mid-19th century and probably from the Napoleonic period, these were referred to as the Left Wing and Right Wing Casemates. In 1858, they were called collectively the West Face Casemates. Each group comprised two sets of three casemates, with short passages for communication between the sets: one group was formed by the West Flank and West Face Casemates the other by the South-West Flank and South-West Face Casemates. Each set of three also had its own sunken area to the rear, at one end of which there was a small Ablutions building, and a Cook House overlooking the sunken area on the edge of the Parade Ground.

The West Face and the South-West Face Casemates were described as finished in 1808, when work had yet to begin on their partners, the West Flank and South-West Flank Casemates. A partial plan
of the South-West Flank and South-West Face Casemates survives, dated 1812. The internal dimensions of one casemate are given as 23.62m long and 18ft 5.49m wide, with ditch walls varying from 0.91-1.83m in thickness, in all except those on the West Face, 20.55m long. The rear elevations of the casemates are faced in yellowish grey stock bricks, laid in Flemish bond. They have been subject to considerable and varying alterations. The original form, best preserved in the western casemate of the South-West Face and the central casemate of the West Face, consisted of a central fan-lit entrance flanked by segmental-arched windows. The ditch elevations were originally pierced only by a single carronade port in each casemate. Each casemate consists of a single large room with a parabolic brick vault. By 1853, and perhaps originally, a sergeant’s bunk occupied one corner at the rear.

To the rear, the external areas are deeply sunken below the level of the Parade Ground and form small yards reached by long flights of brick steps. At one end of each there is an Ablutions building of yellow brick. Latrines may have been provided in the smaller building under the stair that rises to the Parade Ground. Each group of six casemates was provided with a two-bay casemated Cook House, opening off the Parade Ground between the sets of three. These were still used thus in 1897, each flanked by two small stores. In 1858 three casemates, presumably a single group and possibly those of the West Face, which were slightly smaller, were in use as married quarters, the interiors divided by partitions. They housed just eight men each. Of the remainder, five held 35 men, three had 31 and one had 34. By the end of the 19th century the casemates were considered obsolete for defensive purposes but were retained as barracks. The 1897 plan records a complement of 28 men in each casemate of the South-West Flank and South-West Face, 30 in the similarly proportioned West Flank and 26 in the shorter rooms of the West Face. (1)

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

A further plan dating to 1911, with annotations from 1929 and 1947 shows the casemates in great detail and inlcudes intyerior features and labells. (3)

<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.

<3> Unknown, 1911, Dover Western Heights, Citadel Barracks & Western Outworks Ground Floor Plan (Map). SKE51525.

Sources and further reading

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