Royal Armouries: Fort Nelson

Some sort of bunker, perhaps? 

Nah.  That’s no bunker, nuclear or otherwise.  This is actually the modern entrance…

..to Fort Nelson, one of five forts built in the 1860s on the hills overlooking Portsmouth intended to protect the port against French attack, and before we go any further,…

…this is what the place looks like from above, with the modern entrance, bottom right, marked by the yellow circle, and our current position marked by the small pink dot.  The fort is six-sided, with three caponiers, each holding a 13-inch mortar battery (blue circles).  The dotted red line shows the central tunnel beneath the fort with the underground – forty feet underground – armoury marked as a red circle.

On our left, the eastern wall of the redan (the mauve triangle on the overhead shot), protecting the barracks within that could hold some 172 men,…

…and on our right, marked as a green oblong, part of the dry moat that surrounds the walls.  It took ages to build and it wasn’t until the 1890s that the fort was fully armed, and not much more than ten years later, in 1907, it was disarmed, there being no French threat, perceived or otherwise, any more, being used for accommodation until the 1930s, and an ammunition store thereafter, before being abandoned in the 1950s.  What a colossal waste of time and money (look up Palmerston’s Follies should all this have passed you by).

Inside, there are numerous artillery pieces to see,…

…including this nice British 3.7-inch Anti-Aircraft Gun MkII (circa 1943) in the foreground, although it’s the German ’88’ behind that interests me the most.  The first gun on entering the museum, however,…

…is this Great War German M1916 minenwerfer (above & below), the bane of the British & French infantryman’s life.

There’s also this 15-pounder field gun that carried the remains of both Queen Victoria & Edward VII in their (separate) funeral processions (above & below).

And here’s the German 8.8 cm Flak 37 Anti-Aircraft Gun, 1944 vintage, in all its glory.  What a gun.

And here’s its barrel.  What a rubbish photo.

1918 German 10.5 cm Light Field Howitzer 16 (above & following).

Napoleonic artillery.  This bronze French 6-pounder was captured by the British at Waterloo.

Recreation of a late Victorian-era barracks,…

…and some more guns.

1879 Hotchkiss 37 mm revolving cannon.

Clever, eh?

A fine example of one of these, whatever it may be.

Unfinished 10-inch mortar (or dog), found in 1838 in Kurnaul Fort in India (above & below),…

…presumably intended for use against the British.

Down in the tunnels…

…leading, via a spiral staircase, to the North Mortar Battery,…

…this the view outside, with underground entrances,…

…and this the view looking east along one of the outer walls – we’ll visit the monument just peeking into the picture later.

Back through the tunnel,…

…and outside…

..a veritable swathe of poppies.

Old gun positions (above & following).

Looking south east…

…and south west across the Parade Ground in the centre of the fort.

Down among the silhouettes,…

…this view looking from west to east, the parade ground lined with more mortars and cannon…

…and even some naval guns (above & following).

The Artillery Hall.  The brick buildings on either side were the ammunition sheds.

And inside the Artillery Hall,…

…a bloody great railway gun.

This is a British Breech-Loading 18-inch Howitzer Mark 1, designed & tested between 1918 & 1920, sitting, apparently, on an 1886 Railway Proof Sleigh Mark I onto which it was mounted in 1940, its original railway mounting being much longer.  The barrel weighs 85 tons, and was designed to throw a shell of just over a ton a distance of thirteen miles.

A Boer Krupp C73, captured by the British at Pietersburg in 1901, and behind,…

…the gun with which the Germans began the Great War, the 7.7 cm FK 96 n.A.**.

**new mark

French 75 mm Schneider-Creusot M1897 field gun.  The famous ’75’,…

…and although this gun is among the entrance exhibits, I include it here because this Schneider M1895 was actually the forerunner of the ’75’, and the Boers bought loads of these from the French as even this model was far superior to the British artillery.

Apart from the fact that there’s a distinct bulge near the far end of the gold barrel, and I wouldn’t choose to be within several hundred yards of it if someone decided to use it for its intended purpose.

As you can see, there’s loads more stuff to see in the Artillery Hall,…

…and still more outside,…

…including this 64 lb rifled muzzle-loading gun, one of the fort’s original artillery pieces.

Plan of the current fort, the inset showing an aerial shot taken during World War II.

On the way out, this British 4.5-inch Anti-Aircraft Gun Mk III was originally developed as a naval gun, but turned out to be an ideal anti-aircraft gun for the Army; they were used to defend Portsmouth against Luftwaffe attacks during the Second World War.

In the background, behind the gun, is the East Haxo Casemate, named after the French military engineer Baron Haxo, who designed this style in the early 19th Century (see plan below), and in the foreground, the effect of armour-piercing shells on 140 mm steel armour plate,…

…this the view from the front,…

…and this from the back.

The effects of High Explosive Squash Head (HESH) projectiles on a similar piece of armour plate, front…

…and back.  Unpleasant, should you be inside a tank hit by some of these things.

More examples,…

…abandoned in a corner,…

…but equally fascinating.

Outside the entrance, this is Mallet’s Mortar, as it was known, designed for use in the Crimean War but never used in combat.

Mainly because it was rubbish.  Behind, on the right, a 1946 14-inch Mk VII naval gun, once to be seen on a battleship, I imagine.

As we leave, we’d better inspect the memorial we’ve seen in a couple of earlier pictures, and on the way, if we look to our right,…

…this is the view looking across Portsmouth harbour towards the Channel beyond.  That’s the way to France.  Which rather begs the question as to why the forts three mortar batteries face inland, does it not, a fact that did not go unnoticed by some at the time?  Apparently, a French attack was more likely from the north.  Apparently.

The memorial is quite imposing.  Or, at least, tall,…

…as any memorial to Nelson should be.

Final view looking back towards the fort from the memorial, the modern fort entrance on the left, and the East Haxo Casemate that we saw earlier from inside…

..now seen from the outside – check out the earlier plan.