Fort Horsted

Fort Horsted is a scheduled monument that lies in the Horsted Valley to the South of Chatham, Kent, England. It is a late 19th-century Land Fort, and one of six constructed around Chatham and Gillingham, Kent to protect HM Dockyard Chatham from attack. Originally proposed in the Royal Commission on the Defence of the United Kingdom Report, published in 1860, it and the other land defences were omitted as part of general cost cutting with only the coastal defences on the River Medway being retained and completed under the original 1860 proposals. It was not until the mid-1870s that a revised program was accepted, which included the construction of a convict prison at Borstal, Rochester, to provide low cost labour for the construction of a line of four forts, Fort Borstal, Fort Bridgewood, Fort Horsted and Fort Luton . Its construction started in 1879 and was complete by 1889 after much delay.

The fort was constructed almost entirely of concrete, topped with chalk and earth with no visible concrete exposed from the outside, except from the gorge or rear of the fort. The ditch was protected by two single and one double counterscarp galleries.

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