Exploring Kent's Past

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Monument details

Summary

Within the western end of the Tenaille, located at the southern end of the Citadel complex, two gunrooms known as Short Casemates were inserted. These were accessed from the ditch level and contemporary with the tenaille; completed by 1810. (location accurate to the nearest 5m based on available information)

Monument Types

• CASEMATE (Demolished, Post Medieval to Modern - 1808 AD? to 1911 AD?)
• COOKHOUSE (Demolished, Post Medieval to Modern - 1808 AD? to 1911 AD?)
• GUN STORE (Demolished, Post Medieval to Modern - 1808 AD? to 1911 AD?)
• SERGEANTS MESS (Demolished, Post Medieval - 1897 AD? to 1899 AD?)

Full description

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Summarised from report:

These two casemated barracks, together with an adjacent casemated Cook House, are located in the demi-bastion at the western end of the tenaille. The barracks also served as gunrooms, positioned to flank the western part of the South Ditch beyond the tenaille. They were the first casemates to be completed in the Citadel, by December 1808. The 1858 Interim Report on the Citadel noted that the barracks were empty but could accommodate 21 men in each room. By 1897, the barracks formed a makeshift Sergeants’ Mess, with an adjoining Mess Kitchen in the former Cook House. However, in 1899 the Mess moved into purpose-built accommodation within the Citadel and at this point, a proposal to re-appropriate the casemates as barracks for eighteen men apiece was briefly entertained, but quickly withdrawn. By 1911 the whole complex was disused,
as it had been, in all probability, since 1899.

The group is faced in grey stock brick laid in English bond, with the two barracks recessed obliquely beneath segmental arches of a more reddish brick. Their front walls have partially collapsed but sufficient remains to show that each followed a common pattern, with a central doorway flanked by windows and a further window, the segmental heads of which survive, over the doorway. (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 these casemates in great detail and inlcudes interior features and labels. (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 English Heritage, 2004, The Western Heights, Dover, Kent: Report No. 2: The Citadel (Unpublished document).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

Related records