The Little Fort

The Little Fort is a fort that has been incorporated into a house, built in 1843 for Anne Oglethorpe and Eleanor Marquise de Mezieres. It has undergone alterations and significant additions in the 20th century. The structure is made of Bargate rubblestone with dressed stone quoins and features a concealed bitumenised roof. It is a two-storey building with a square plan.

On the south side, there are quoins and a pointed-arched doorway framed in heavy wood, which contains a four-panel door with glazed panels and graffiti reading "GM1827." Above the door is a bracketed ledge that once supported a 19th-century bay window, now replaced by a large mid-20th-century window. The building has an embattled parapet with pitched coping on the merlons and a flagpole. To the right, a mid-20th-century single-storey addition, which is not of special interest, conceals the ground floor of the right return. The first floor of this return features two gun slits with raised surrounds.

The left return has two rectangular windows on the ground floor with plain surrounds, and above them, there are two gun slits with raised surrounds. The rear of the fort is encased in a late 20th-century addition that includes inserted window and door openings on the lower floor, while a former pointed-arched doorway on the upper floor has been modified into a square-headed doorway in the mid-20th century. Extensive late 20th-century additions to the rear and set back on either side are not of special interest. Originally, access to the roof was via a rope ladder from the upper floor.

Anne Oglethorpe and Eleanor Marquise de Mezieres were sisters of General James Oglethorpe, who owned Westbrook. While Oglethorpe was in America founding the colony of Georgia, Anne lived at Westbrook, with Eleanor visiting frequently. Both women were staunch Jacobite supporters involved in various plots. The Little Fort was one of two forts they constructed along a pre-existing vineyard wall built by Oglethorpe to prepare Westbrook as a stronghold. None of the other forts survive.