Exploring Kent's Past

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Monument details

Summary

The Drop Redoubt was a key element of the Western Heights fortifications. Crossing the area inside the Redoubt today is a covered way linking the Parade Ground with the entrance of the Main Magazine. It is sunk 1.8m for protection and has a large earth bank along its eastern side. The principal magazine for Drop Redoubt is a bomb-proof vaulted structure covered by an earth mound, the latter some 3.5m high. Access is gained along a covered way which splits into three, the branches leading to the Parade Ground, Officers’ Quarters and the southern part of the terreplein. The current arrangement includes an original free-standing magazine completed in 1806 and which had a capacity of 320 barrels. (location accurate to the nearest 1m based on available information)

Monument Types

• MAGAZINE (Disused, Post Medieval to Modern - 1806 AD? to 1945 AD?)

Full description

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Summarised from report:

The Drop Redoubt was a key element of the Western Heights fortifications. The principal magazine for Drop Redoubt is a bomb-proof vaulted structure covered by an earth mound, the latter some 3.5m high. The current arrangement includes an original free-standing magazine completed in 1806 and which had a capacity of 320 barrels. Access is gained along a covered way which splits into three, the branches leading to the Parade Ground, Officers’ Quarters and the southern part of the terreplein. The covered way enters the magazine and becomes the gallery leading to no1 caponier. A pair of doorways in the northern wall of this gallery lead into the magazine and the passage that surrounds it. The magazine has two distinct elements: the magazine itself and a narrow vaulted passage enclosing it. The vaulted passageway, which supports a layer of bomb-proofing, was added during the re-modelling of the redoubt in the 1860s. The magazine is rectangular in plan with a square-plan shifting lobby at the southern end. Both the magazine and lobby have parabolic vaults and thick walls standing on a rendered plinth, all built in a red-brick laid to English bond. The construction of magazine buildings to this plan with thick walls, vaults and pitched slate roofs was a standard practice of the Board of Ordnance at this time. (1)

An early plan of the fort dating to 1811, which depicts all of the structures completed under the Napoleonic scheme of works at the Drop Redoubt, shows the main magazine, in the same approximate location as it is today. (2)

A later plan dating to 1860 shows the interior structures of the Drop Redoubt, including the main magazine, as they were left in 1815 and immediately prior to the 1860's scheme of improvements at the fort. (3)

<1> English Heritage, 2000, The Western Heights, Dover, Kent. Report No 3 The Drop Redoubt: A 19th-Century Artillery Fortification (Unpublished document). SKE13677.

<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, 1860, Drop Redoubt, Dover, Plan, Sections and Elevation Shewing Proposed Alterations And Additions (Map). SKE51528.

Sources and further reading

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