Exploring Kent's Past

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Monument details

Summary

The southern entrance (also known as Archcliffe Gate) to the western heights fortress was constructed in the 1860’s as part of a major revision of the southern defences. It was located at a point where the South Military Road attained the crest of the ridge. Included within the southern entrance defences were a series of gun rooms and a musketry gallery, which were accessed via a long, dog leg passage leading from the north western side of the gatehouse. The whole South entrance was demolished in 1967. (location accurate to the nearest 1m based on available information)

Monument Types

• ABLUTIONS BLOCK (Disused, Post Medieval to Modern - 1860 AD? to 1945 AD?)
• CASEMATE (Disused, Post Medieval to Modern - 1860 AD? to 1945 AD?)
• MAGAZINE (Disused, Post Medieval to Modern - 1860 AD? to 1945 AD?)

Full description

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Summarised form report:

The southern entrance (also known as Archcliffe Gate) to the western heights fortress was constructed in the 1860’s as part of a major revision of the southern defences. It was located at a point where the South Military Road attained the crest of the ridge. Included within the southern entrance defences were a series of gun rooms and a musketry gallery, which were accessed via a long, dog leg passage leading from the north western side of the gatehouse. The whole South entrance was demolished in 1967.

It is likely that this dog-leg passage is largely intact but has been sealed off, at the inner end, the passage opened into a lobby-like area which provided access to both the gun rooms and the musketry gallery. There were three gun room arranges in echelon, they are intact but inaccessible. Each had a central carronade embrasure with a musket loophole to each side, covering the upper section of the ditch. Like their contemporaries in the Drop Redoubt, these gun rooms have brick-built semicircular-vaulted casemates with timber suspended-floors. An expense magazine was located to the rear and accessed through lobby entrances off the rear walls of nos 2 and 3 gun rooms. The musketry gallery conformed to the conventional Western Heights plan of small vaulted casemates linked to one another by short passages. Each casemate had two stepped brick-built embrasures and a ceramic ventilation pipe set high in the vault, examples of both remain visible in the revetment wall. The two casemates are labelled as ‘Ablutions’ and ‘Latrines’ in 1876, the only example of a defensible latrine found on the Heights. (1)

A plan dating to 1876 shows the casemated gun rooms and gallery, including labels which gives details about the function and use of the rooms. (2)

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

<2> Royal Engineers, 1876, Hand-tinted plan and section of a proposed main magazine for St Martin's Battery at Western Heights (Plan). SKE51623.

Sources and further reading

Related records