Nothe Fort and outer gateway

Nothe Fort and outer gateway, Weymouth

A coastal fort begun around 1860 and completed in 1872, with minor additions and alterations in the 20th century. The major construction work was carried out by 50 men of 26 Company, Royal Engineers under Colonel J Hirse. Built in Portland ashlar with brick vaults and stone, asphalted, or grassed roofs.

The fort is planned as a demi-lune with a straight entrance wall to the west and a lower contemporary caponier on the southwest corner. The main entrance is approached through a further entrance gateway and tunnel approximately 32 metres to its west. A series of twenty-two casemates at the upper courtyard level, with twelve original gunports, sits above a continuous circuit of magazines and stores. The parapet carries three later 6-inch gun emplacements, one with gun in-situ, and various later additions, including a Bofors repeater and a Second World War observation post in the southwest corner.

The entrance wall is built in fine coursed ashlar to a deep roll-moulded heavy parapet, beneath an earth and grass covering with a series of stone ventilators. The wall sweeps down at the left-hand end and is raised over the entrance archway, with a small projecting barbican on three heavy stone corbels. Above is a series of slits, then an arch with heavy rusticated voussoirs and jambs containing double-thickness plank doors on massive strap hinges to a segmental head, with a further grillage door to the right under a 'portcullis' grille. To the left are three small arched openings, and set low to the right is a plain flush door opening. Far right are three above four small arched openings, then the projecting caponier with a series of slits immediately below the heavy parapet and various square openings below.

The seaward walls are built in unusually large blocks of stone, up to approximately 2 metres by 0.9 metres thick, with a heavy rock-faced parapet set to a wide glacis and a sea wall begun in 1860. The entrance gateway gives access to a tunnel with a brick transverse barrel vault and stone Welsh vault over heavy rock-faced masonry walls.

The courtyard is surrounded by 22 wide-arched casemates with heavily rusticated jambs and voussoirs, some with timber-framed glazing and some blocked with inserted doors and lights. Above the dividing piers were originally 25 square piers, of which eight remain on the north side and four on the south. These short piers are approximately 0.9 metres square, with very heavy moulded caps, some of the work in concrete. They are joined by simple iron rails which continue round the parapet where piers have gone. On the entrance side a slow ramp leads to the southwest corner.

The gun emplacement on the south side has a ring of 27 heavy iron fixing bolts on a 2-metre diameter base. The casemates have brick cross-vaults; the deep embrasures to the gun-ports have large splayed voussoirs plus a lining of thick iron plates. At the lower level is a continuous 'ambulatory' with a series of magazines and other storage rooms or recesses, all in ashlar with fine geometrical barrel or groin vaulting of the highest quality. In the northwest corner is a spiral staircase in a brick-lined turret with a brick-domed top. The doors to magazines are of massive cast-iron approximately 200 millimetres thick.

To the west of the main entry is a free-standing entrance gateway and tunnel in a broad grassed embankment, approached through ramped side walls to a rock-faced wall with arched opening to voussoirs on a plain plinth. The tunnel, approximately 10 metres long, is covered by a concrete barrel vault.

This is a characteristically massive piece of construction, executed in very accurately cut and jointed work with very exact geometry to the complex vaulting. The property is now owned and run by Weymouth Civic Society and opened to the public.