Summary
Fortified coastal battery built between 1859 and 1861 with a practice battery added later in the 1860s. Modified later in the C19 for updated artillery provision and from the 1950s in use as a public garden and model village.
Reasons for Designation
Lumps Fort built between 1859 and 1861 as part of a review of the coastal defences of Portsmouth dockyards, and its practice battery added later in the 1860s, is scheduled for the following principal reasons:
* Period: as part of the internationally important C19 defences of Portsmouth dockyard, just preceding those constructed under the 1860 Royal Commission stemming from fears of a French invasion. Additional historic importance is derived from its use as the headquarters, during the Second World War, of the Cockleshell Heroes;
* Diversity: as a good example of the construction and form of a mid-C19 coastal battery and its later development to upgrade its artillery in the face of changes in military technology;
* Survival: although the earthen ramparts are incomplete and have lost their parapet and the ditch has been infilled the trace of the fort is fully legible. Its buildings, including defensible barracks, main and expense magazines and infantry caponiers survive remarkably well. It also provides a rare example of the employment of raised cavalier gun positions in fortifications of this period;
* Documentation: the site is well documented including committee reports, historic plans, maps and photographs;
* Potential: for archaeological deposits associated with the construction and use of the fort. Additional, below-ground structures such as the central infantry caponier in the infilled ditch, may survive;
* Group value: with the other numerous designated fortifications associated with the defence of Portsmouth, particularly those protecting the south coast of Portsea Island; Southsea Castle; Eastney Forts and Fort Cumberland. It also has group value with the Grade II Southsea Common Historic Parks and Gardens registration of which it forms part.
History
The Royal Commission fortifications are a group of related sites established in response to the 1859 Royal Commission report on the defence of the United Kingdom. There were eventually some 70 forts and batteries in England which were due wholly or in part to the Royal Commission. These constitute a well-defined group with common design characteristics, armament and defensive provisions. Whether reused or not during the C20, they are the most visible core of Britain's coastal defence systems and are known colloquially as `Palmerston's follies' after Lord Palmerston (1784-1865) who was Prime Minister at the time.
Lumps Fort, constructed between 1859 and 1861, so slightly preceding the Royal Commission but included in its overall plan for the defence of Portsmouth, followed a succession of batteries on the coast to the east of Southsea Castle. These dated back to 1539 and were built to protect the eastern seaward approach to Portsmouth and prevent any landing at Southsea Common which would threaten the city and its dockyards from the south. The exact location of the first of these fortifications, Chatterton’s Bulwark built in 1539, is uncertain but it is shown in the Cowdray engraving depicting the Battle of the Solent in 1545 (copied from a lost painting commissioned shortly after the battle) and was probably in the vicinity of Lumps Farm, named for Ralph Lumpe who acquired the farm land in 1284.
The next battery to defend this part of the shore between Southsea Castle and Fort Cumberland (1747-1748) was Lumps Farm Battery, built in 1765 as a pair with Eastney Battery further to the east. A plan of 1773 shows Lumps Farm Battery to have been a three-sided masonry fortification built near the shore-line with four embrasures in each of the sides for fire along the beach rather than out to sea. A rectangular earthwork and dry ditch protected the three landward sides of the battery. However, by around 1810 coastal erosion had rendered both Eastney Battery and Lumps Farm Battery untenable and they were disarmed. By the time of the 1838 Portsea Island tithe map the front portion of Lumps Farm Battery is shown to have been lost to the sea. Proposals in the mid-1840s and late-1850s for replacement batteries came to nothing.
In July 1857 a report by the Inspector-General Fortifications, Sir John Fox Burgoyne highlighted the importance of the defence of Portsmouth and included proposals by his assistant, Major William Jervois, for the strengthening of the city’s fortifications. This included a plan for three new batteries between Southsea Castle and Fort Cumberland. Those at Lumps Farm and Eastney were to be ‘keeps’ with accommodation for a garrison while the third one, nearest Fort Cumberland, would be manned from the fort. The keeps ‘would be for nine guns each, with accommodation under the terre-plein for 100 men, provided with full revetments, 27 feet high, flanked by small caponieres, and covered by an earthen glacis to the front. The guns would fire through embrasures, and would bear on the beach on either side, and on boats or vessels approaching the shore. To the rear would be a projection in the centre of the work, containing officers' quarters, on top of which three or four guns could be placed, affording a reverse fire on `any scattered parties of the enemy which might succeed in getting on shore’. An amended proposal by Jervois in December 1857 relocated the keeps further away from the shore, increased the guns to 12 and proposed a series of open-backed shoreline batteries to their front. The plan for these additional batteries was subsequently abandoned and Lumps Fort was to be sited as per the Major Jervois original proposal near the shoreline.
The tender for the new Lumps Fort was advertised on 20 October 1859 and won by Messrs Booth and Rogers of Gosport with the earthworks subcontracted to Mr Edward Custance. The work was overseen by Captain Fowler of the Royal Engineers. The completed fort was handed over to the Royal Artillery by the Royal Engineers on 14 May 1861, with the construction having cost £18,945.
As described in an article in the Portsmouth Times and Navy Gazette on 22 December 1862, the fort had a symmetrical D-shaped trace consisting of a four-sided earthwork rampart (approximately 200 yards wide by 75 yards deep) with a surrounding wet ditch, which drew its water via a sluice and culvert from the sea. The two faces of the rampart facing the coast met at an obtuse angle with flanking faces to the east and west. The gorge was closed by a ten foot, six-inch high, loop-holed, brick wall. The centre of the gorge was occupied by an arrow-shaped projecting barrack block, 100 feet long, which was also loop-holed for defence.
At the three salient angles of the ramparts, raised ‘Cavalier’ gun emplacements were positioned to mount traversing guns en-barbette (firing over the parapet rather than through an embrasure) on ‘C’ pivot mountings. Below these, in the ditch, three musketry caponiers were provided for local defence. On each of the two front faces, equally spaced between the Cavalier positions, were three ‘A’ pivot traversing gun positions firing through embrasures. Each of the flanks had four more ‘A’ pivot traversing gun positions, also firing through embrasures. The guns were served by local expense magazines, ammunition recesses and artillery stores built within the shoulders of the earthworks, To the rear, adjacent to the gorge wall at each end of the earthworks were positioned two brick-built casemated magazines within earth covered mounds. The entrance, on the western side of the barrack block, was reached over a drawbridge crossing the ditch. The barrack block accommodated 40 men plus an officer and officer’s servant. The initial armament, consisting of four smooth-bore (SB) 8-inch Shell guns (two on each of the flanks) and 13, 68pdr SB guns, was installed in June 1861. By 1862 two of the 68pdr guns had been replaced by 7-inch rifled breech-loading (RBL) guns. In 1888 the Defence Committee recommended that Lumps Fort (which was now armed with eight 64pdr RMLs, three 7-inch RBLs and a 7-inch rifled muzzle loader) be armed with two 6-inch BL Mk IV guns on hydro-pneumatic disappearing mountings. This new armament was installed in concrete emplacements and by 1900 all the other guns had been removed. In 1903 a third disappearing 6-inch RBL position was created, set between the first two, although the actual gun may never have been installed as they were phased out after 1905. By April 1907 the fort was completely disarmed but two Defence Electric Light (DEL) searchlight emplacements were built at the western end of the south rampart. These illuminated the sea in front of boom defences which the Admiralty installed by 1909. During the First World War the fort was the site of a single 6-pr Hotchkiss quick-firing (QF) anti-aircraft gun mounted on the ramparts. The DEL emplacements remained in use.
During the 1860s a practice battery was added to the fort to allow Artillery Volunteers to perform live firing at sea targets. The battery was positioned on the glacis of the fort near the western caponier and consisted of a number of 18ft by 12ft ground platforms, without any earthworks. The platforms were made up of thick stone slabs on which were positioned wooden, four truck, Garrison Carriages. The practice battery was updated in August-September of 1901 with new concrete positions built for two 5-inch BL guns on Vavasseur mountings at a cost of £299.
In 1932 Lumps Fort was sold to the Portsmouth Corporation for £25,000 for recreational use with initial plans for a lido subsequently followed by one for a mixed development of lido, Winter Garden, open air theatre and tennis courts, a proposal for a memorial garden to King George V and lastly another pair of mixed use schemes. However, no development had taken place before the outbreak of the Second World War when initially, the underground parts of the fort were used as air raid shelters for up to 400 people. Later in the war it was used as the headquarters of the Royal Marine Boom Patrol Detachment, the code name for the Commando unit which undertook Operation Frankton, a submarine and canoe-borne raid on German shipping on the River Gironde in France in December 1942, an action later memorialised as the ‘Cockleshell Heroes’.
After World War II, between 1951 and 1953, the interior of fort was landscaped to provide a public garden and in 1955 the western portion of the site was leased to a private developer, Mr R Frost of Herne Hill, for the creation of a model village which opened in 1957. A Japanese garden designed by Takashi Sawano was added to the east of the Rose Garden in 2000.
Details
PRINCIPAL ELEMENTS
The site comprises a D-shaped enceinte of four earthen ramparts and a brick wall enclosing the gorge with its centrally placed fortified brick barrack block. The surrounding ditch no longer survives. Built into the ramparts are two expense magazines and three later semi-circular, concrete-lined, gun emplacements. At the outer angles of the ramparts are two brick caponiers, the third, central one, may survive below ground level. To the rear of the parade ground, now partly a landscaped public garden and partly a commercial model village, are a pair of main magazines. To the south-west of the fort are the remains of a practice battery.
DESCRIPTION
The four-sided ramparts are of grass-covered earthen construction and consist of two front ramparts facing the sea, meeting at a shallow angle, and two side ramparts. The ramparts are around 5.5m in height on the external face of the two south-facing front ramparts but the side ramparts are much reduced in height due to later landscaping works and have been lost entirely in the north-east corner where there is a later entrance. The original form of the parapet and embrasures to the ramparts has been lost. At the intersections of the front and side faces are two raised mounds which formed the ‘Cavalier’ gun positions. At the angle of the southern ramparts, a gap for a later entrance has been excavated through the ramparts. Below this the central caponier may survive below ground level. Some, probably original, bricked up structures survive in the inner face of the ramparts to the east of the entrance. Another later entrance has been created through the ramparts on the western side to provide an entrance to the model village.
Extending out from the south-east and south-west corners of the ramparts, and angled to provide fire along both the front and flanking ramparts, are the two complete surviving caponiers. These are of red brick laid in English bond with Portland stone quoins, capping and loophole surrounds. accessed via a vaulted, brick-lined tunnel from the interior of the fort. These have arched openings with sloping brick revetments on either side. The loopholes to both caponiers are largely obscured to lintel height by earth from the infilled ditch.
Built into the inner face of the ramparts, at the intersection of the front and side faces beneath the cavalier mounds, are the two original brick expense shell and cartridge stores. These have segmental arched openings and vaulted interiors. Also set into the inner face of the ramparts are three concrete six-inch breech-loading hydro-pneumatic (BLHP) gun emplacements. These are semi-circular in plan with angled sloping retaining walls, shell lockers (without fittings) and some iron fixing rings. The western emplacement is partially buried. The two eastern emplacements contain modern timber gazebos in their interiors. To the west of the western emplacement is a concrete Depression Range Finder (DRF) gun control position. The eastern DRF may survive in undergrowth. To the west of the easternmost BHLP emplacement, on the top of the rampart, is an octagonal concrete base for a First World War 6-pr Hotchkiss quick-firing (QF) anti-aircraft gun.
The northern face of the fort (the gorge) consists of a 3.2m high, bastion-trace, red brick wall with strategically-placed rifle loop-holes. The wall is of English bond with semi-circular section brick capping and with a projecting, centrally placed, defended barrack block. The original entrance to the fort is located just to the west of the barrack block and has the original Portland stone gate piers with plinth and cap. A metal plaque, dating from 1992, set into the western gate pier commemorates the Cockleshell Heroes.
The single-storey barrack block is pentagonal in plan and set forward to defend the length of the gorge wall. It is of red brick laid in English bond with yellow brick and Portland stone dressings and parapet to the flat roof. The two forward facing north elevations each are of four bays with timber-framed sash windows with rubbed yellow brick heads. One of the windows on the western front wall has been replaced by a modern doorway but the original lintel remains. The side elevations each have three rifle loop-holes. The parade ground (south) elevation is of nine bays (three entrances and six windows) and has fenestration and entrances set in full height round-arched openings. The interior retains its cast iron columns and jack-arched ceiling to the main space, as well as at least one set of armoured window shutters. Adjoining the barrack block to the east is a modern, single-storey, rendered-brick, block on the site of the original latrines.
To the west of the barrack block, in the north-west corner of the original parade ground, is one of the two main magazines. This is a rectangular brick structure with a vaulted roof and Portland stone dressings and is matched by its pair in the north-east corner of the fort.
The original parade ground of the interior of the fort is now divided into two with the eastern part containing a landscaped public garden. Roughly the western third of the interior is occupied by the Southsea Model Village.
Apart from on the northern side, the fort is bounded by iron railings. Outside the southern boundary of the fort are the remains of the practice battery. This consists of a mound topped with thick undergrowth. Aerial photographs suggest that the stone-flagged inclined gun platforms survive.
EXTENT OF SCHEDULING
The scheduling aims to protect the trace of the fort including the ramparts and gorge wall and the interior of the fort. It does not include the infilled ditch apart from where the fenced boundary of the fort includes this feature and at the southern entrance where there are the potential remains of the central caponier. An additional area of scheduling to the south-west of the fort includes the remains of the practice battery.
EXCLUSIONS
The following are excluded from the scheduling: all modern railings, bollards, fences or fence posts, gates and gateposts, the paved, tarmacadam, stone or concrete surfaces of all modern pathways and steps; all modern stone walling; all benches, picnic tables, bins, lights and lamp posts; signage and information boards; security cameras and poles; telegraph and flag poles; drains and drain covers; wooden sheds or gazebos; all planters, flower beds, rocks and garden structures (such as the pergola) in the landscape gardens and model village; all late-C20 or C21 buildings including the ticket office that relate to the model village; all late-C20 or C21 landscaping and models that relate to the model village. However, the ground beneath all these features is included.
