Dale Fort

Dale Fort

This extensive barrack complex with defensive walls was planned in 1850 and built between 1853 and 1857 to serve as a gun emplacement. The entire structure is superbly built in large blocks of tooled Pembrokeshire grey limestone, with granite used for stairs and copings.

The fort occupies a narrow peninsula that is cut off by a ditch and limestone ashlar wall featuring musketry loops, running down to the sea on each side of a top platform. The wall is buttressed with granite steps and platforms behind. The top platform has triple granite-framed low apertures on each side to cover the ditches, and a semi-circular wall to cover the western approaches, with massive granite copings and three gun openings. The main gateway, dated V.R. 1856, originally featured a drawbridge and is positioned towards the northern end of the defensive wall.

Within the fort, on the northern seaward side stand two flat-roofed barrack blocks, finely built in grey limestone with parapets. These are linked by a wall with musketry loops and back onto the inner court, presenting one storey to the court and two storeys to the northern seaward side. Opposite, on the other side of the court are steps up the rock-face to the top western gun emplacement and to a platform with a sunken concrete gun-pit halfway up. A plain stores block adjoins the gatehouse to the south. At the far end of the court is another smaller gate, giving access to a narrow eastern court behind the second barrack block, walled on the north and with a single storey row of open-bay buildings on the right, now with 20th-century additions on top. Beyond is the eastern gun-platform, a large site levelled out of the cliff with fine limestone ashlar terrace walling coped with massive granite slabs.

From the western entry, the gate range is single-storey with a basement to the left. The gateway is slightly projected with stone voussoirs to a square-headed rebate for the drawbridge and a cambered-headed arch inset. Brick and iron roofs exist within, and a whitewashed stone cambered arch faces the courtyard with double wooden doors. The stores block to the right is plain and flat-roofed, whitewashed, with a door and windows to the ground floor only internally; the upper level has gun loops on the western end, with a 20th-century added floor and granite steps up and behind from the east.

The first barrack block is long with two whitewashed chimneys. Two long early 20th-century lean-to conservatories run along the whole courtyard side, with a 20th-century slated pent porch between the conservatories at the main entry and a gabled centrepiece to the right conservatory. A length of mid-19th-century iron rail with Prince of Wales feathers motif survives in front of the left conservatory. Access is to the upper floor of the barrack block, owing to the cliff-side site. The left part features two 16-pane sashes, a door with overlight, a 16-pane sash, a door with overlight, and a 16-pane sash. The seaward front is two-storey with a three-window range on each side of a centre stair light. Some windows retain 16-pane sashes; most are now plate glass. Beyond is a small basement-and-one-storey building with a slate roof hipped at one end and two hipped half-dormers on the seaward side. A terrace wall with musketry loops runs along the eastern side. All walls and windows have raised rusticated quoins and heavy granite coping.

The second barrack block stands forward of the wall line, linked by a dog-leg wall, with a wall along the rear of a rear courtyard. This wall backs onto the narrow eastern court, its gateway in line with the main gate and featuring a similar cambered arch rebated for a door to the west. The wall is buttressed to the court, and opposite, built into the bank, is a row of six garages adapted from a single storey ashlar range, now with 20th-century accommodation on top.

The second barrack block is shorter, with two stone chimneys on the flat roof and heavy raised bands between floors and above the first floor, under a parapet cornice. Iron-railed steps descend to the basement, with a 20th-century addition obscuring the first floor door. One first floor window appears on the western end wall; one window and door appear on the southern rear wall at each floor. The seaward side has a two-window range to the left of the stair light and a one-window range to the right. Windows above are 12-pane sashes; lower sashes are partly small-paned.

The gun platform on the point features a low ashlar wall massively coped in granite, quadrant curved to the left, then extending outward to an acute curved point, then a diagonal stretch back to another curve, then the wall runs back to the rear rock-face.

Both barrack blocks and all other roofed buildings are fireproofed with parallel low brick vaults on iron beams to roofs and fine brick quadripartite vaults to lower floors. Stone dog-leg stairs descend with iron rails. Sash windows on the seaward side were originally all small-paned, though some are now plate-glass. Two cast-iron fireplaces in the first block are marked Yates, Haywood & Co of Rotherham; one Tudor-arched stone fireplace stands on the lower floor. The second block has three basement vaulted bays, one first floor fireplace with a fluted surround and crowns in the angle blocks.