Exploring Kent's Past

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Monument details

Summary

The majority of the buildings within the Detached bastion are Captain Du Cane’s work of the early 1860s, though all were modified in the 1890s, and are constructed in stock brick laid to English bond. The expense magazine is a sunken building approached along a short covered way from the troop shelter. The structure was radically altered during the 1890s but retains some work of the early 1860s. (location accurate to the nearest 1m based on available information)

Monument Types

• MAGAZINE (Demolished, Post Medieval - 1860 AD? to 1890 AD?)
• MAGAZINE (Disused, Post Medieval to Modern - 1890 AD? to 1945 AD?)

Full description

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Summarised from report:

The majority of the buildings within the Detached bastion are Captain Du Cane’s work of the early 1860s, though all were modified in the 1890s, and are constructed in stock brick laid to English bond. The expense magazine is approached along a short covered way from the troop shelter. The structure was radically altered during the 1890s but retains some work of the early 1860s. The original arrangement comprised two rooms, a shifting lobby and a magazine built in series straight back from the entrance, the whole covered by a bombproof traverse. In the 1890s, the original magazine was sealed and replaced by a new sunken magazine, offset to the south and reached from the original shifting lobby, duly modified. The traverse remains largely unaltered. The entrance, approached up three steps, is set into a vertical brick façade with flank walls steeply ramped to the profile of the traverse. The shifting lobby represents only half of the original, having been truncated on the north. Most of the west wall is original but the north-west corner and north walls are concrete rebuilds of the 1890s. Plinths for a raised timber floor survive along the east and west walls. Detail includes a scar from a coat rack on the east wall and in the south-west corner, an inserted lamp recess, with a stone lintel, partly chased into the west wall. The entrance to the 1890s magazine, in the south wall of the lobby, has a rebated wooden frame, painted green, with a segmental arched head cut into the lobby brickwork. There were double outward-opening doors onto a passage vaulted in red stretchers, descending six concrete steps to the magazine. The magazine is cavity-walled, the inner skin in English bond, but the gaps to the cavity have been filled by brown salt-glazed bricks stamped ‘C Jennings, Poole Dorset Patent’. Most of the north wall is rendered and there are metal brackets on the north and west walls.

<1> RCHME, 2001, The Western Heights, Dover, Kent. Report No 7: North Centre and Detached Bastions: 19th-century fortifications (Unpublished document). SKE17503.

Sources and further reading

Related records