Fort Pitt, Kent
Encyclopedia
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...
. It did not last long, becoming a hospital
Hospital
A hospital is a health care institution providing patient treatment by specialized staff and equipment. Hospitals often, but not always, provide for inpatient care or longer-term patient stays....
for invalid soldiers in 1828, with an asylum
Mental Hospital
Mental hospital may refer to:*Psychiatric hospital*hospital in Nepal named Mental Hospital...
added in 1849. Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale OM, RRC was a celebrated English nurse, writer and statistician. She came to prominence for her pioneering work in nursing during the Crimean War, where she tended to wounded soldiers. She was dubbed "The Lady with the Lamp" after her habit of making rounds at night...
started the first Army Medical School
Army Medical School
Founded by U.S. Army Brigadier General George Miller Sternberg, MD in 1893, the Army Medical School was by some reckonings the world's first school of public health and preventive medicine...
there in 1860, but by the 1920s the hospital was closed and the site converted into a girls school
School
A school is an institution designed for the teaching of students under the direction of teachers. Most countries have systems of formal education, which is commonly compulsory. In these systems, students progress through a series of schools...
, now known as Fort Pitt Grammar School
Fort Pitt Grammar School
Fort Pitt Grammar School is a selective girls' grammar school in Chatham, Kent, England, built on the site of Fort Pitt, a Palmerston Fort. The school holds specialist Science College status...
. The University for the Creative Arts building also occupies part of the site of the original fort and some original brickwork remains visible at the side of the building.
Most of the outer defences of the fort survive including parts of the outer works which extend into the adjacent recreation grounds to the east and west. Some of the internal buildings date to the period of use as a hospital and possibly earlier, maybe even preceding the defensive works. From the hill it is possible to see Fort Clarence
Fort Clarence
Fort Clarence is a now defunct fortification that was located in Rochester, Kent, England.-History:The fort was built between 1808 and 1812 to prevent invaders gaining access from Maidstone Road to the River Medway. The work was composed of a long brick revetted dry ditch running between a...
tower to the west, and the remains of Fort Amherst
Fort Amherst
Fort Amherst, in Kent, England, was constructed in 1756 at the southern end of the Brompton lines of defence to protect the southeastern approaches to Chatham Dockyard and the River Medway against a French invasion. Part of it is now open to the public....
to the north east. A ditch, wall and (reputedly) tunnels were to link the three into a single fortified Napoleonic defensive line, defending the naval docks against a (land-based) attack from the south.
Fort Pitt is also the location of the fictional duel between Mr. Tracy Tupman and Dr. Slammer in the Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...
novel The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club
The Pickwick Papers
The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club is the first novel by Charles Dickens. After the publication, the widow of the illustrator Robert Seymour claimed that the idea for the novel was originally her husband's; however, in his preface to the 1867 edition, Dickens strenuously denied any...
.