Fort Burgoyne -Defending Dover in the Nineteenth Century

Dover was always a key objective for Napoleon, but he did not wish to mount a direct assault on the port from the sea, given the strength of the Royal Navy as well as the batteries along Dover’s seafront (such as Amherst and Townshend Batteries), Archcliffe Fort and the Castle itself. Instead he planned to take Dover form the landward side and the fortifications on the Western Heights were built in direct response to this line of military thinking.

Starting off as a series of simple earthworks, by 1802 serious plans had been drawn up by Lt Thomas Hyde Page and were well under construction. Former temporary guard houses at the sites we now know as the Citadel and the Drop Redoubt were demolished and replaced with brick buildings, including structures such as magazines, barracks, guard rooms and artillery towers. The marvellous triple spiral staircase known as the Grand Shaft was built in 1804, linking the top of the cliff directly with the seafront below.

While all this work was taking place on the Western Heights, major alteration work was ongoing at Dover Castle. A major mediaeval castle, it was no longer the formidable fortress it had once been due to the great advances made in artillery. Many of the castles towers and walls had to be lowered and reinforced in order to support this new weaponry, and help to defend the town of Dover by supporting the Drop Redoubt’s gunfire.

However, this did still leave the northern approaches to the town vulnerable, and Fort Burgoyne is the result of this realisation. Fort Burgoyne was started in 1861 and completed by 1868. This was exactly the same period during which the Western Heights was undergoing a major refit and modernisation and there are very many similarities between the two fortifications. Fort Burgoyne was originally armed with 29 guns, so was able to bring considerable firepower to bear in the event of an attack. This meant that by 1868 Dover was completely surrounded by fortifications; Fort Burgoyne to the north, Dover Castle on the east, the Western Heights to the west and the sea to the south, with the breakwater defences, batteries and Archcliffe Fort providing further defence.

Surrounded by a 35-foot wide ditch the fort is polygonal in shape and unusually is flanked by two wing redoubts connected to the fort by ditches. The Dover to Deal road crosses the eastern ditch and the Dover to Guston road crosses the western ditch. The fort was home to 270 men and 7 officers housed in casemented (bombproof from mortars) barracks situated around a central parade ground. Originally some of the guns were intended to be 7-inch Rifled Breech Loading guns but owing to some bad accidents and a poor standard of training these were replaced with the oldstyle muzzleloaders.

By 1906 the large guns had been removed and replaced by machine guns, while during the First World War brick gun emplacements were built. In the Second World War concrete gun emplacements were added and the fort became home to two batteries of 25 pounder field guns.

In June 1861 work also began on the construction of bombproof casemated barracks to house 1 Field Officer, 6 officers, 217 men and two horses. These barracks were built by civilian contractors at a total cost of £29,508 but the remainder of the work was completed by military labour. In 1897 a hutted camp (Fort Burgoyne Huts also known as the red huts) was constructed adjacent to the fort on land previously occupied by Castle Hill Farm. In 1912-13 Fort Burgoyne Huts were replaced with Connaught Barracks.