Ramparts, Revetments, North Battery Platform, North And South Musketry Walls Of Northern Fort

Ramparts, revetments, north battery platform, and north and south musketry walls of northern fort, Berry Head Country Park, Brixham.

Military fortifications dating from 1795 to 1807, probably designed by Lieutenant-Colonel Alexander Mercer. These defences protected the northern promontory of Berry Head, guarding seaward-looking artillery batteries against landward attack.

The main ramparts are constructed of roughly coursed squared Devonian limestone rubble, with gate piers and gun embrasures finished in ashlar. Granite string courses run along the ramparts and battery platform. The three-sided rampart contains 18 gun embrasures and is approached through a roughly central gateway with a long walled passage behind it. A dry moat runs in front, deepest beside the gate.

The gun embrasures are slightly splayed on the inner face and broadly splayed on the outside. The ramparts themselves consist of an earth core faced externally with a slightly battered stone revetment wall. Inside, a raised terrace carries the gun platforms, which are cut into the terrace and edged with stone rubble side walls. Several platforms retain granite slab floors installed in 1802 to 1809, replacing earlier wooden floors. Cannon have been positioned in some embrasures to show their original appearance.

The gateway is now approached by an earthen causeway, though it originally featured a wooden drawbridge. Recesses and iron fittings for the drawbridge mechanism remain visible on the inner faces of the tall gate piers, which have projecting stone courses forming neckings and caps with shallowly chamfered tops fitted with iron spikes for former finials. Halfway along the passage, shallow recesses with iron hinges on both side walls presumably held folded-back gates. At the rear, the walls slope downwards in a curve, finishing at each end with a round pier; the northern pier retains a shallow conical cap of red sandstone. Higher sections have flat stone copings, largely removed from lower areas. The counterscarp revetment wall, surviving only in short stretches either side of the entrance causeway, is of roughly coursed squared limestone rubble.

Adjoining the northern rampart is a battery platform, protected on its south-western side by a long musketry wall. A short stretch of musketry wall remains on the north-eastern side, though most has been destroyed by quarrying. A substantial stretch of the southern musketry wall survives, approximately 140 metres long, running north-east from the southern end of the ramparts. This wall includes a triangular projection or redan to provide covering fire along the wall face. Neither the northern and southern musketry walls nor the battery platform possess copings.