Chapter Three : Fort Clarence in the 20th and 21st centuries

Change in the military nature of the Fort at the beginning of the 20th century was indicated by the fact that it ‘hosted’ military tournaments for the local population in the years leading up to the First World War. In 1914, on the outbreak of the First World War, the Fort was used as a recruitment centre for young men in the locality anxious to sign up and fight for "King and Country".

The Fort remained largely unaltered in these years apart from the demolition of the large brick archway over the road to the village of Borstal in 1924, which had been built as a defendable gateway over the road into Rochester. In 1925 part of the grounds of the Fort, to the west of the Tower and today named Fort Clarence Gardens,  provided a grassed and wooded recreation ground for the residents of Rochester and was donated as a public space by Charles Willis who sat on the City Council, was four times Mayor and was a Freeman of the City.

Willis, a local business man and philanthropist was known as the 'Borstal Benefactor' who gave a sack of coal to every Rochester citizen during the Great Depression and donated shoes to schoolchildren. It was reported : “Great bags of shoes arrived. One lad had never had shoes before and got this huge pair of boots. He was so proud - and polished them every day with the sleeve of his jumper”.  When he died in 1943, his house in St Margaret's Road was bequeathed to charity.

Charles had his own firm of solicitors with premises in Chatham, and Rochester and had an interest in the paddle steamer fleet on the River Medway. He began buying small plots of Fort Clarence land from the Board of Ordnance from 1909 onwards, including land to the west of the Fort, towards the river. A solicitor’s letter of 1924 informed the City Corporation that he proposed to ‘lay out two pieces of land as a whole as a public recreation ground and then present the ground to the Corporation'. According to a newspaper report, the City Corporation appreciation was warm and Mr Willis was ‘glad of the opportunity to secure this extra lung for the city' and plans were made to lay out the land with terraces and shrubberies, seats and a shelter. 

A civic reception for this gift was requested by the Corporation in May 1925, but declined by the donors because Mrs Willis’ distress was too great, the reason being that Charles and his wife had lost their eldest son on active service after the Armistice in 1918 which brought the First World War to an end. George White Willis was killed on active service in an air accident in January 1919 as a result of an engine failure in the plane he was testing at the time. (link) He was buried in France and it was the intention of Charles and his wife that the recreation ground be divided, respecting the terrain, with the northern portion laid out as a memorial garden for their son, while to the south there would be a public pleasure ground. 

In 1925 the166th City of Rochester Anti-Aircraft Battery of the 55th Kent Heavy Anti-Aircraft Regiment, Royal Artillery occupied the Fort. It was a part-time volunteer air defence unit of Britain's Territorial Army from 1925 until 1955 and was raised in Tonbridge, Kent with its headquarters at Fort Clarence. 

With the approach of the Second World War the Territorial Army's units were mobilised on 23 September 1938 during the Munich Crisis, with units manning their emergency positions within 24 hours, even though many did not yet have their full complement of men or equipment. The emergency lasted three weeks, and they were stood down on 13 October. In February 1939 the existing AA defences came under the control of a new Anti-Aircraft Command. In June, as the international situation worsened, a partial mobilisation of the TA was begun in a process known as 'couverture', whereby each AA unit did a month's tour of duty in rotation to man selected AA gun and searchlight positions. On 24 August, ahead of the declaration of war, AA Command was fully mobilised at its war stations. 

Initially known as an Anti-Aircraft Regiment, it added 'Heavy' to its title when the Light Anti-Aircraft units were formed early in the war. Originally armed with the 3 inch 20 cwt Gun, it soon rearmed with the 3.7 inch Gun (mobile & static) and the static mounted 4.5 inch and 5.25 inch Guns. The 3.7 inch HAA on the left can been seen at Fort Amherst and used in action there. (link) 

With the onset of the Battle of Britain, on 1 September 1940 over 200 aircraft attacked Maidstone, Biggin Hill, Kenley and Chatham and in joint action with the fighters, the guns broke up the formations and shot down four aircraft, but the airfields at Biggin Hill and Kenley were badly hit. A circular mounting for a light anti-aircraft gun survives on the open ground immediately west of Clarence Tower in Clarence Gardens on the other side of the Rochester-Borstal Road. 

After the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, the Home Guard, 33rd (Short Bros) Battalion, based in Rochester, used Fort Clarence as its headquarters. They were affiliated to the Queen's Own Royal West Kent Regiment whose cap badge they wore. This badge depicts the White Horse of Kent standing on a scroll inscribed with the motto 'Invicta' (Unconquered). The horse was the symbol of the old Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Kent. Below is another scroll inscribed 'Royal West Kent'.

The Battalion was formed in May 1940 by the redesignation of the Local Defence Volunteers Company and was made up of men in reserved occupations and those under the age to serve in the Armed Forces. They wore  khaki uniform and were equipped with a few rifles. The Fort served as the Home Guard’s HQ, training centre and stores until it was disbanded in December, 1944. Once again it was the case of turning old buildings into new usage and during that time, the cell block was turned into an ammunition store and the chapel into a gymnasium.

At the same time Fort Clarence's the old Napoleonic sister fort, Fort Pitt, was providing shelter for the pupils of the Medway Technical School for Girls which now occupied the site. In the event of an attack  the pupils the pupils made their way to the safety of the ammunition chambers below the surface. (link) 

After the Second World War came to an end, so to did the Fort's 135 year attachment to the British Army and its ownership passed to the General Post Office Telephones which used Clarence Tower for its work and its flanking towers, on the River Medway to the west and next to the Maidstone Road in the east, were both  demolished, the latter in the 1960s. Perhaps the most important event in the history of Fort Clarence took place in 2016 when 'Historic England' published Paul Pattison's Survey Report : 'Fort Clarence, Rochester, Kent. Napoleonic Gun Tower and Defensive Line'. It recorded that :

In answer to the question : What are the remains above ground at the centre of the Fort today ? They are  : Clarence Tower (1), the Governor’s House (2) and the earth bombproofing over the main magazine (3) remain at what was the centre of the Fort.(link)

In addition, to the west of the Tower are the remains of the first floor of the west casemates (left) constructed to allow the defenders to fire down the ditch. Seen from the inside (right) it appears that the defence of the ditch to the to the Medway Tower was to be by infantry firing from four loopholes on the ground floor because the design of the four windows was not for artillery. 

To the east of Clarence Tower, there are the defensive ditch with a rifle butt used by the Territorial Army as part of a miniature rifle range for rifle practice in the early 20th century.(4) 

In 2022 'Kent Online' announced, perhaps the strangest of the Fort's transformations, when it announced : 'One of Kent’s most important historical homes, dating back to 1808, has gone on the market. This former Napoleonic fortress in Rochester has been converted into a two-bedroom flat and is up for sale for £750k'. Five years before the Guardian newspaper ran an article headlined :

It highlighted the Tower's conversion into a domestic residence consisting of both internal room conversions. but also a roof garden area area with views over the Medway Towns. Link

The Fort, born in a period of war in 1812, then placed at the service of sick and wounded British Army soldiers and then its prisoners, before returning to active service in both World Wars, was finally being used as a domestic residence in a period of peace.

John Cooper

Chapter Two : The Fort becomes a Hospital and then an Army Prison

In February 1819, with the Napoleonic threat gone with Napoleon in exile on the island of St Helena, it was recorded that a total of 4,500 barrels of gunpowder were removed from Fort Clarence and redundant as a fort, Clarence now became a home for : 'Unfortunate persons belonging to the Army who were afflicted with insanity'. In June, a number of men were referred to Clarence from the already existing, Army Hospital at its sister fort now Fort Pitt Army Hospital. Fort Clarence was officially ‘occupied as an Hospital for Insane Persons, of the Army Medical Boards’ by order of 18th September 1818’. 

 A French engineer, Charles Dupin, composing his ‘A View of the History and Actual State of the military Forces of Great Britain’ in 1822, who had commented on Fort Pitt's conversion into an army hospital had said : ‘The casemates are fine and perfectly well-constructed. No moisture penetrates into them and they are at present inhabited by invalids who compose the only garrison of this fortress'. There is no reason to believe that the accommodation provided for patients at Fort Clarence was no less satisfactory. However, although Clarence Tower, the Guardhouses and Casemates were considered ideal for confinement of the mentally ill, it is not clear as to how far they were conducive to recovery, when the main concern at that time was security rather than treatment. 

By 1830, there had been little or no new building at Fort Clarence but the Army Medical Board rented a cottage to provide quarters for its officers, just north of the former Governor’s House which had now been converted as hospital residence for officers with mental illness. The open areas of the old defensive line of the Fort owned by the Board of Ordnance were now let to tenant graziers, from whom the Chief Royal Engineer, based at Chatham, enjoyed ‘the Benefit for the grass...as is customary'. One of the tenants was George Pratt the Deputy Governor who rented it ‘for the employment of Insane Patients’. At the same time the former Main Magazine of the Fort was used as a ‘Bathing Room for insane patients’. 

When the Asylum at Fort Clarence closed in 1844 its inmates were sent to Shorncliffe and then Yarmouth, while at Fort Pitt Military Hospital had a new asylum built and opened in 1847. It accommodated 32 men and 2 officers and its humane approach to its patients no doubt stood in stark contrast to that at Fort Clarence as is indicated by the fact that it was described at the time as : ‘More a house of detention or observation than an asylum. The fence surrounding the building is only four and a half feet high and has frequently been cleared by patients at a bound’. In addition the building had its own garden and the portico in the front allowed the patients to get out for fresh air in inclement weather.

Clarence was now about to undergo its next reincarnation, this time as a military prison and in 1845 it was confirmed that the Fort was ready to receive 200 prisoners. In the first instance, the existing fort and hospital buildings were now converted for use by the prisoners, but in order to satisfy their spiritual needs building tenders were invited for a chapel which would stand to the north and adjacent to the central tower. 

In 1846 Fort Clarence Military Prison had a governor and staff comprising 21 warders and servants, with accommodation for 22 prisoners in cells and a further 84 ‘in association’. In 1851 there was provision for the Governor, 8 warders and 184 prisoners and furnished with ‘the necessary Mess Rooms, Cooking Houses, Storehouses and buildings for accommodation of the Officers and Men’. A year later, in 1852, the Army, anticipating changes expected with a review of the Mutiny Act, ordered that additional cells should be added in order to bring the prison population up to an expected 300. It is not clear from reports if additional cells were built and it seems more likely that the prisoners were confined in some of the underground chambers associated with the central tower. 

One draconian punishment, in these years, used to keep order and punish transgressions by the prisoner, was the Army lash. In January 1861 there was a report of a prisoner at Fort Clarence being sentenced to 50 lashes. The report stated that the doctor, who always had to be in attendance at such punishments, needed to intervene after 25 lashes as the prisoner had fainted. Fortunately the doctor intervened which was not universal, and the remainder of his punishment was remitted. In the years before this the punishment would have continued when the prisoner was deemed fit enough to receive the rest of his punishment.

It was reported that soldiers being helped back to their cells were carried back after their floggings with their tunics draped over their shoulders, so bad were their injuries that they couldn’t do them up. In 1880, the longtime advocate for the abolition of the Army lash and MP for Rochester from 1878-85, Arthur Otway, finally achieved his ambition and years of lobbying and the barbaric punishment came to an end. Geoff Rambler's article on the website, 'Rochester MP’s campaign ends flogging in the British Army' provides details of Otway's campaign. (link)

As the years passed the numbers of prisoners accommodated in the Fort began to fall, to the extent that when it received the order to close as a prison in 1873 it was reported to be 'Almost tenantless'. The writing had been on the wall in 1869, when the Royal Commission on Courts Martial recommended the establishment of a central military prison and the closure of the district prisons like Fort Clarence and financial provision for such prisons occurred for the last time in army estimates for 1869-70. Nevertheless, although there were no units stationed here after1870, a plan of the prison dating to 1879 indicated its continuing use for military punishment. In fact considerable expansion had taken place, with numerous buildings established on the parade and along the rear of the Defensive Line of the Fort. 

One of the commanding officers who served in the Fort at the end of the 19th century was Lieutenant-Gen George Wentworth Forbes of the Royal Marines who became something of a local figure. His is death in 1907 was recorded with due solemnity in the Rochester, Chatham and Gillingham News. Forbes, a city magistrate, also became known as a fine orator in his role as chairman of New Brompton Conservative Association. His funeral was reported as 'of a simple character, in deference to the expressed wish of the gallant officer'. Later, another officer who served at the Fort was Captain Francis Emberton, who fromthe Royal Army Ordnance Corps, had served in the Zulu War of 1879, the Egyptian campaign of 1882-6, the relief of General Gordon and in the South African War.

Very few records exist as to the use of Fort Clarence during this period 1870 -1913. It seems to have provided limited and periodic barrack accommodation for ‘miscellaneous details’ while at the same time maintaining cells for 22 prisoners. The end was in sight for the prison when, in 1901, the cells were described as ‘awaiting condemnation' and today no prison buildings have survived above ground. Finally, in 1913, it was transferred to the County Association for use by the Territorial Force and another chapter of the remarkable History of Fort Clarence was about to begin. 

John Cooper

Chapter Three : Fort Clarence in the 20th and 21st centuries

Chapter One : Construction and function as a Napoleonic Fort

The origin, of what became known as Fort Clarence, began in the 18th Century when the idea of a fortification on St Margaret’s Heights in the city of Rochester emerged as part of a wider scheme to extend the land defences of Chatham Dockyard. This was reflected in an inspection by the Senior Committee of Engineers in 1783, when Colonel Debbieg of the Royal Engineers drew up an idealised sketch plan for new defences which included a small work on St Margaret’s Heights, to the west of the Dockyard, in Rochester. The outbreak of war with France in 1793 underlined the need to extend the defences, but it was only the imminent threat of invasion which jolted the Government into action and precipitated new works. 

In 1803 Britain had declared war on France, led by its military genius of an Emperor, Napoleon Buonaparte and would remain at war with France for over a decade. His invasion plans of Britain had a significant impact on British naval strategy and the fortification of the South East England coast and the fortifications built in the Medway Towns were a major part of that strategy. Against this background, Fort Clarence, was built in 1808, three years after the construction of the neighbouring Fort Pitt started, with the intention that it would guard Rochester Bridge and thwart any attempt by a French army landing in Kent and crossing the River Medway and then marching along Watling Street to London. 

The Fort was almost certainly named after Prince William, the forty-three year old, third son of King George III, who had been given the title of the Duke of Clarence and St Andrews. The Fort Clarence built in Halifax, Canada to counter the French enemy there, at the same time, was named the Duke of Clarence’s Tower. (link) After a career in the Royal Navy, the Duke had risen to the rank of admiral and despite repeated petitions he wasn't given a command during the Napoleonic Wars. In 1830 he ascended the throne and King William IV.      

Under the Defence Land Act, compulsory purchase of over 23 acres of land were requisitioned for construction of fortifications, by the Government, in the name of the Crown. The land in question was owned by the Dean of Rochester, the Bishop of Rochester and a Mr W. Head. Over the next four years work proceeded slowly. Unlike its sister fort, Fort Pitt, it was not concentrated on one site but stretched out on two arms, from the Rochester Maidstone Road at its east end to the banks of the River Medway in the west. It had a large tower at its centre and two smaller towers at each end of its 250 metre long, defensive ditch. The officer in charge of the whole project was Lt Col D’Arcy of the Royal Engineers. The layout of the Fort is Illustrated below and with thanks to Keith Gulvin, with D'Arcy's original plan for the central Tower, here on the right. 

It was basically a strongly fortified ditch and rampart or embankment, with magazines, the  rooms to store gun powder and ammunition, built underground. It was specifically constructed to defend Rochester and its bridge across the Medway from a French land attack but also to prevent a river-borne landing along the eastern bank of the River Medway the Fort defended. In the overall plan of the defence of the Bridge and Chatham Dockyard from French attack, Clarence was at the western end of the defensive line consisting of Delce Tower, the mighty Fort Pitt and Gibraltar Tower. They connected to the formidable defences in the east, centred around Fort Amherst which towered over the Dockyard.

At the intersection of the Fort and the Borstal Road, a wooden swing bridge was built to carry the road across the ditch and a large brick work archway and block house were built to defend against an enemy approach from the south. What became known as Clarence Tower can be seen to the left of the archway with the photograph taken from the inside of the fortifications looking south. Here it is today, with its modernised roof area as part of its conversion into modern private accommodation and, on the right, reimagined by Keith Gulvin, as it was as a functioning fort when completed in 1812. A large area to the rear of Clarence Tower, i.e. to the north of the Tower, was walled in and probably served for parade and drill area. 

From the roof of the Tower, the strength of its position can be appreciated, with its view along the Medway to Rochester Bridge to the north. In addition, it also had a clear view of the other Napoleonic defences to the east in Rochester and Chatham.

In the event of an attack the Fort was supplied by a sally-port, its secure entryway, in the ditch above the Medway Tower. Brought in by boat on the River stores and munitions could be unloaded in relative safety and transported through underground tunnels to other parts of the Fort. Clarence Central tower was at the heart of the fortifications and had tunnels connecting it to other parts of the Fort, many of which  still exist. (link) The one leading down to the River Medway terminated in casemated gunrooms known as the West Casemates.

The whole fort was garrisoned and armed only for a short time when the Napoleonic threat was at its highest. Its firepower consisted of fourteen 12-pounder cannon, twelve 18-pounder carronades and six 12-pounder carronades recorded in the inventory made in January 1819. By this time with the Napoleonic threat gone, it was recorded that a total of 4,500 barrels of gunpowder were removed from the Fort. Apparently, as a Fort, it was considered obsolete, as far as military tacticians were concerned, even before its building was completed. 

In 1820, redundant as a working fort, Clarence, still under Army control, now took on a new role as a home for : 'Unfortunate persons belonging to the Army who were afflicted with insanity' and in June began to provide care for a number soldiers with mental afflictions referred to it from its sister fort, now the Fort Pitt Army Hospital in neighbouring Chatham.

For more information the English Heritage report of Fort Clarence published in 2002 and written by Paul Patisson provides the professional survey of the site. (link) In his opinion this surviving part of the military history of the Medway Towns with its a military line on the land front allied to a surviving fortified tower, was a defensive arrangement regarded as :  ‘rare, if not unusual for its time’.

John Cooper

Chapter Two : The Fort becomes a hospital and then an Army prison 

Chapter Three : Fort Clarence in the 20th and 21st centuries