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Monument details

HER Number:TR 34 SW 2115
Type of record:Monument
Name:Casemated gunrooms and musketry gallery at the North Entrance of the Western Heights, Dover

Summary

The North Entrance to the Western Heights was situated at a narrow point of the ridge towards the north-eastern end of the fortress, where the North Military Road completed its more moderate ascent from Dover town. The earliest phase of works on this entrance dates to the Napoleonic period, but further work on the North Entrance to complete and modernise it began in in March 1860 and it was finished by February 1864. This created a more elaborate defensive scheme and perhaps reflects a greater concern with a potential assault from the north. Part of this scheme was the construction of a number of casemated gunrooms to defend the ditch, accessed through the tunnel between the inner and outer entrances. (location accurate to the nearest 1m based on available information)


Grid Reference:TR 3131 4093
Map Sheet:TR34SW
Parish:DOVER, DOVER, KENT

Monument Types

  • CASEMATE (Disused, Post Medieval to Modern - 1860 AD? to 1912 AD?)
  • GUN STORE (Disused, Post Medieval to Modern - 1860 AD? to 1912 AD?)
  • MAGAZINE (Disused, Post Medieval to Modern - 1860 AD? to 1912 AD?)
  • TELEPHONE EXCHANGE (Disused, Modern - 1912 AD? to 1945 AD?)

Full description

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Summarised from report:

The North Entrance to the Western Heights was situated at a narrow point of the ridge towards the north-eastern end of the fortress, where the North Military Road completed its more moderate ascent from Dover town. The earliest phase of works on this entrance dates to the Napoleonic period, but further work on the North Entrance to complete and modernise it began in in March 1860 and it was finished by February 1864. This created a more elaborate defensive scheme and perhaps reflects a greater concern with a potential assault from the north. Part of this scheme was the construction of a number of casemated gunrooms to defend the ditch, accessed through the tunnel between the inner and outer entrances.

Access to these rooms is through a set of doors in the eastern wall of the tunnel, opening onto a stair-passage which descends to the north-west. The stair passage has a semicircular vault and a steep stone stairway with stone wheeling platforms along either side. The stairs emerge into a brick-vaulted lobby area serving both the gun rooms and the musketry gallery. An expense magazine on the south-east side of the lobby was for the storage of ammunition for the guns. The magazine is of broadly the same plan as other examples on the Western Heights, comprising an entrance lobby leading to the magazine via a door in a stout timber frame. The musketry gallery is reached via a short groined entrance from the lobby. It is built to the general Western Heights plan with five semicircular vaulted casemates linked by short interconnecting passages; similar examples can be found in North Centre Bastion. The first four casemates each contain two musket loopholes below an earthenware ventilation pipe in the centre of the wall above; the fifth, due to its position next to the counterweight recess, has only one loophole. They are constructed entirely in brick with stepped courses on the exterior face for protection against ricochet. The three gun rooms, comprising semicircular-vaulted casemates with stone flagged floors, are arranged in echelon to give a field of fire down the inner ditch westwards towards the North Centre Bastion. Access to them from the lobby is through two doorways; subsequent doorways in the party wall of each gun room align with these, effectively forming two passages through the three rooms. The passage nearest the front wall provides the shortest route from the lobby and the stairs, the other passage forms a route from each gun room to the expense magazine. The gun rooms are practically identical in plan, and very similar to those elsewhere on the Western Heights. A small room off the south-eastern corner of no 1 gun room is labelled ‘Artillery Store’ on a plan dated 1893. Artillery stores contained all equipment for the maintenance and operation of artillery pieces, such as oil, cleaning cloths and rammers. This one takes the form of a simple rectangular brick chamber with a single door and evidence for shelves on the inside walls. In the early part of the 20th century the musketry gallery was abandoned and the gun rooms were adapted for other uses, notably as a telephone exchange according to a plan of 1912. The exchange was located in nos 2 and 3 gun rooms, with the carronade embrasure in no 2 converted into a doorway to provide direct access to the ditch, while in no 3, the embrasure and one of the loopholes were converted into windows. (1)


<1> RCHME, 2000, The Western Heights, Dover, Kent. Report No 6: The Entrances to the Fortress: 19th-century artillery fortifications (Unpublished document). SKE17501.

Sources and further reading

Cross-ref. Source description
<1>XYUnpublished document: RCHME. 2000. The Western Heights, Dover, Kent. Report No 6: The Entrances to the Fortress: 19th-century artillery fortifications. [Mapped feature: #92907 Casemated gun rooms and musketry gallery, ]

Related records

TR 34 SW 82Part of: Western Heights, Dover (Monument)