Coalhouse Fort
Coalhouse Fort is an artillery fort in the eastern English county of Essex. It was built in the 1860s to guard the lower Thames from seaborne attack. It stands at Coalhouse Point on the north bank of the river, at a location near East Tilbury which was vulnerable to raiders and invaders. It was the last in a series of fortifications dating back to the 15th century and was the direct successor to a smaller mid-19th century fort built on the same site. Constructed during a period of tension with France, its location on marshy ground caused problems from the start and led to a lengthy construction process. The fort was equipped with a variety of large-calibre artillery guns and the most modern defensive facilities of the time, including shell-proof casemates protected by granite facing and cast-iron shields. Its lengthy construction and the rapid pace of artillery development at the time meant that it was practically obsolete for its original purpose within a few years of its completion.
The fort's armament was revised several times during its 70 years of military use, as its role evolved in the river's defensive system. It was initially a front-line fortification, supported by Shornemead Fort and Cliffe Fort located to the south and east respectively on the Kent shore. Over time, as batteries and forts further downriver became the front line of the Thames defences, Coalhouse Fort was stripped of its main weapons and it was altered to support smaller quick-firing guns intended to be used against fast-moving surface and aerial targets. Its last military use was as a training facility for a few years after the Second World War.
Decommissioned in 1949, the fort was used as a storehouse for a shoe factory before it was purchased by the local council. The surrounding land was developed into a public park, but the fort itself fell into dereliction despite its historical and architectural significance. From 1985 it was leased to a voluntary preservation group, the Coalhouse Fort Project, which had been working to restore the fort and use it for heritage and educational purposes. Funding for its restoration was provided in part by the Heritage Lottery Fund and the Warner Bros. film studio, which used the fort as a location for the opening scenes of the 2005 film Batman Begins. The group closed in 2020.
Development
Early defences
East Tilbury, which stands at the western end of the section of the Thames known as Lower Hope Reach, was fortified long before the building of Coalhouse Fort due to its vulnerability to seaborne attackers. Settlements on both sides of the Thames were raided by the French in 1379 during the second phase of the Hundred Years' War. The attack prompted the building of Cooling Castle on Kent's Hoo Peninsula between 1380 and 1385 but there was initially no corresponding move to improve the defences of East Tilbury.Appeals from the local people led to the Crown agreeing in July 1402 to build an earthen rampart and towers to protect the settlement. The site of these early defences is not known but might have been near where St Catherine's Church now stands. A ditch of unknown date in that vicinity may represent a fragment of the medieval defences.
Henrician defences
ordered the construction of an artillery blockhouse at East Tilbury in 1539–40 as part of a major scheme to fortify the coastline of England and Wales. It followed his break from the Pope and the Catholic Church, which led to fears that the Catholic powers of Europe would seek to invade so as to reimpose Papal authority. Five blockhouses were built along the Thames between Gravesend and Higham – two on the north bank at Tilbury and East Tilbury and three on the south bank at Gravesend, Milton and Higham.The East Tilbury Blockhouse was built partly with stone taken from St Margaret's Chapel in Tilbury, which was dissolved in 1536. Its form is not known but it probably consisted of a brick and stone structure, perhaps in a D-shape, with a rampart and ditch to enclose its landward side. It was recorded as having fifteen iron and brass cannon of various calibres in 1540; these had been increased to 27 by 1539–40. It had a small permanent garrison, consisting of a commander and his deputy, a porter, two soldiers and four gunners. The blockhouse may have been altered in 1545 but in 1553 it was disarmed. Although the corresponding blockhouse at Gravesend continued in use and that at Tilbury was eventually incorporated into Tilbury Fort between 1670 and 1683, the one at East Tilbury seems to have been abandoned before the end of the 16th century. By 1735 it had been inundated by the river and was in ruins. Its site by the shoreline has since been eroded away by tidal action, though it is possible that remains from the blockhouse may still survive under the river mud.
Coalhouse Battery
The June 1667 Raid on the Medway by the Dutch fleet during the Second Anglo-Dutch War exposed the weaknesses of the Thames defences. It took another hundred years for the defences on Gravesend Reach to be improved, in the form of new works at Gravesend and Tilbury built in the 1780s, but even then the potential of forward defence – to prevent enemies accessing the lower Thames – continued to be neglected. It was not until the outbreak of the French Revolutionary Wars that the need for effective forward defence was addressed. Lieutenant Colonel Hartcup of the Royal Engineers carried out a survey of the Thames in 1794 in which he recommended building a triangle of artillery batteries to guard the entrance to Gravesend Reach and the next reach of the river, Lower Hope Reach. Two of the batteries would be located on the south bank at Shornemead, about north-west of Higham; at Lower Hope Point, about north-west of Cliffe; and on the north bank at East Tilbury, about north of the old Henrician blockhouse. The batteries would have a maximum range of about and their arcs of fire would overlap, enabling them to support each other.The new battery was constructed during 1799 on marshy ground a short distance south-east of St Catherine's Church. It took its name from the nearby Coalhouse Point, which was named for a coal wharf that once existed there to serve East Tilbury. The soft soil caused many problems but the work was completed by July of that year. It was equipped with four 24-pounder cannon mounted on traversing carriages, which enabled the gunners to track targets much more easily than had been the case with traditional garrison carriages. The battery faced the river with a semi-circular earthen rampart on which the guns were mounted. A walled-off area to the rear enclosed a barracks, magazine and shot kiln. The whole structure was surrounded by a polygonal water-filled ditch. It was modified in 1810 to raise the height of the rampart and to add a small expense magazine where ammunition was stored for immediate use. The French did not test the Thames defences, despite an invasion scare in 1804, and the battery was abandoned along with those at Lower Hope Point and Shornemead following Napoleon's final defeat in 1815.
First Coalhouse Fort
Renewed tension between Britain and France in the 1840s led to a modernisation of some of Britain's coastal defences. The batteries at Shornemead and Coalhouse Point were reinstated and upgraded, though the one at Lower Hope Point was never restored. In the case of the Coalhouse battery, it was substantially expanded between 1847 and 1855 to convert it into a fort. The work was slow as the marshy ground caused the foundations to crack and the structure to subside, and the contractor was unsatisfactory.The new fort was built as an extension to the north-west of the existing battery, and thus took an irregular plan. The rampart was extended to accommodate more guns – a total of seventeen 32-pdrs. – and a much enlarged interior replaced the old barracks and magazine. Caponiers at the east side and firing positions on the other sides facilitated musketry defence against land-based assailants. The fort was surrounded by a wide water-filled ditch. A bridge on the west side provided the only access route.
Second Coalhouse Fort
By the late 1850s, Britain and France were locked in an arms race. A new generation of increasingly accurate and powerful guns had been developed and rifled breech loader, mounted on fast-moving, manoeuvrable steam-powered ironclad warships such as the French La Gloire and the British. Such vessels posed a serious threat to the important naval installations on the Thames, including the victualling yards at Deptford, the armaments works of Woolwich Arsenal, the shipbuilding yards at North Woolwich, and the magazines at Purfleet. It was not possible for large warships to reach central London, as the river was not yet deep enough to take ships of more than 400 tons above Deptford. As the American Civil War was soon to show, it was quite possible for the warships of the day to run past forts and attack up coastal rivers.The new weapons meant that the existing coastal and riverine forts were rendered largely obsolete. The American Civil War was soon to demonstrate that traditional brick and masonry forts could be reduced to rubble by rifled guns. The government's response was to appoint a Royal Commission on the Defence of the United Kingdom, which published a far-reaching report in 1860. The Royal Commission recommended that a triangle of forts should be established on the lower Thames, east of Gravesend. This would involve replacing the existing Coalhouse Fort on the Essex shore with a new fortification, similarly replacing the existing Shornemead Fort and building the wholly new Cliffe Fort opposite Coalhouse Point, which would replace the abandoned 18th-century battery at Lower Hope Point. The locations of the forts would enable interlocking arcs of fire from their guns. A boom defence and a minefield would be installed off Coalhouse Point in wartime to further boost the strength of the defences.
The design of the new fort was similar to that of the other Royal Commission forts on the Thames, with an arc of granite-faced casemates, reinforced by iron shields. These, it was believed, would be virtually invulnerable to enemy fire. It was originally envisaged that the fort would have two tiers mounting around 56 guns; 28 in casemates and the rest in barbettes on the fort's roof. Construction began on this basis in July 1861 but as the work progressed the design was changed, leaving the fort with only a single tier of casemates. Like its predecessors, its construction was seriously affected by the poor ground conditions and was disrupted by shifting and cracking foundations. Colonel Charles George Gordon, who was later to die in the siege of Khartoum, supervised its final phases of construction. The fort cost a total of £130,000 to build.