Cliffe Fort is a Royal Commission

Royal Commission on the Defence of the United Kingdom

In 1859 Lord Palmerston instigated the Royal Commission on the Defence of the United Kingdom because of serious concerns that France might attempt to invade the UK...

 fort built in the 1860s on the edge of the Cliffe marshes on the Hoo Peninsula

Hoo Peninsula

The Hoo Peninsula is a peninsula in England separating the estuaries of the rivers Thames and Medway. It is dominated by a line of sand and clay hills, surrounded by an extensive area of marshland composed of alluvial silt. The name Hoo is the Old English word for spur of land.-History:The Romans...

 in north Kent

Kent

Kent is a county in southeast England, and is one of the home counties. It borders East Sussex, Surrey and Greater London and has a defined boundary with Essex in the middle of the Thames Estuary. The ceremonial county boundaries of Kent include the shire county of Kent and the unitary borough of...

 to protect against invasion via the Thames. It is opposite Coalhouse Fort

Coalhouse Fort

Coalhouse Fort is a large casemated fort in East Tilbury, near the modern town of Tilbury, in Thurrock, Essex, downstream from Tilbury Fort. It contains a museum of memorabilia from World War I and II.-History of the fort:...

 in Essex

Essex

Essex is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the East region of England, and one of the home counties. It is located to the northeast of Greater London. It borders with Cambridgeshire and Suffolk to the north, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent to the South and London to the south west...

: they are 2 km apart. Construction was difficult due to the marshy ground and the malaria

Malaria

Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease of humans and other animals caused by eukaryotic protists of the genus Plasmodium. The disease results from the multiplication of Plasmodium parasites within red blood cells, causing symptoms that typically include fever and headache, in severe cases...

-carrying mosquitos. It was armed with 12.5-inch 38-ton

RML 12.5 inch 38 ton gun

The RML 12.5 inch guns were large rifled muzzle-loading guns designed for British battleships and were also employed for coast defence.-Design:The gun originated from a desire for a longer 12-inch gun than the existing RML 12 inch 35 ton gun...

 and 11-inch 25-ton

RML 11 inch 25 ton gun

RML 11 inch 25 ton guns were large rifled muzzle-loading guns used as primary armament on British battleships and for coastal defence. They were effectively the same gun as the RML 12 inch 25 ton gun, bored to 11 inches instead of 12.-Design:...

 rifled muzzle-loading guns. Protection of these guns was provided by granite

Granite

Granite is a common and widely occurring type of intrusive, felsic, igneous rock. Granite usually has a medium- to coarse-grained texture. Occasionally some individual crystals are larger than the groundmass, in which case the texture is known as porphyritic. A granitic rock with a porphyritic...

-faced casemates with shields for added defence. The shields, casemates and the rails on which the gun carriages stood are all still visible today.

A Brennan Torpedo

Brennan Torpedo

The Brennan torpedo was a torpedo patented by Irish born Australian inventor Louis Brennan in 1877. It was powered by two contra-rotating propellors that were spun by rapidly pulling out wires from drums wound inside the torpedo...

 station was added in 1890. This was a wire-guided missile

Missile

Though a missile may be any thrown or launched object, it colloquially almost always refers to a self-propelled guided weapon system.-Etymology:The word missile comes from the Latin verb mittere, meaning "to send"...

 used for harbour defence: the launching rails are still visible at low water. It was replaced around 1910 with quick firing guns. The fort was armed in World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

 and was used as an anti-aircraft battery in World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

. It is now inside a gravel

Gravel

Gravel is composed of unconsolidated rock fragments that have a general particle size range and include size classes from granule- to boulder-sized fragments. Gravel can be sub-categorized into granule and cobble...

extraction site and is inaccessible and very overgrown. It can however be viewed from the riverside path.

External links

• Cliffe Fort
• History, Description, Plan at Palmerston Forts Society website
• Underground Kent
• Curious Places