Qualla: Crownhill Fort https://qualla.com/crownhill-fort en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:11 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/b/v/n/crownhill-fort-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Crownhill Fort https://qualla.com/crownhill-fort Crownhill Fort: Introduction https://qualla.com/crownhill-fort/ Photo credit Tony Atkin, CC BY-SA 2.0. Crownhill Fort was built to fight a war that never happened. In 1859, Britain's prime minister Lord Palmerston saw Napoleon III's France as a rising threat and convinced Parliament to fund the most expensive peacetime fortification programme in British history. The forts that resulted came to bear his name, and Crownhill, completed in 1872 on a natural outcrop above Plymouth, was the largest of the ring built to defend the Royal Dockyard at Devonport from a French overland attack. The French never came. Russian General Todleben, the engineer who had defended Sevastopol against the British during the Crimean War, was shown the building works in 1864 and gave them his professional compliments.

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Image: Tony Atkin | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/b/v/n/crownhill-fort-wp/gbvn-crownhill-fort-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Crownhill Fort: A Seven-Sided Defence https://qualla.com/crownhill-fort/ Photo credit Nilfanion, CC BY-SA 3.0. Captain Edmund Frederick Du Cane designed Crownhill as a heptagon, seven sides each protected by massive earthen ramparts and a deep dry ditch. The ditch alone required moving 200,000 tonnes of bedrock, hewn out by hand to a depth of thirty feet and a width of thirty feet. Six th...

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Image: Nilfanion | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/b/v/n/crownhill-fort-wp/gbvn-crownhill-fort-a-seven-sided-defence.mp3 0:06 2 full Crownhill Fort: The Forgotten Bankruptcy https://qualla.com/crownhill-fort/ Photo credit E Gammie, CC BY-SA 2.0. Construction began in April 1863. In 1866, after a strike, the building contractor George Baker went bankrupt, and the Royal Engineers finished the work themselves and then moved in as the fort's first occupants. The total cost came to £76,409, a substantial sum at the time but, ...

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Image: E Gammie | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/b/v/n/crownhill-fort-wp/gbvn-crownhill-fort-the-forgotten-bankruptcy.mp3 0:06 3 full Crownhill Fort: From Recruitment Hall to Falklands Springboard https://qualla.com/crownhill-fort/ Photo credit Nilfanion, CC BY-SA 3.0. The French invasion never materialised, but Crownhill kept finding work. In the First World War it became a recruitment and transport centre for troops bound for Turkey and Africa, then a demobilisation depot, then the home of the newly-formed Royal Corps of Signals. In the Secon...

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Image: Nilfanion | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/b/v/n/crownhill-fort-wp/gbvn-crownhill-fort-from-recruitment-hall-to-falklands-springboard.mp3 0:06 4 full Crownhill Fort: A Disappearing Gun and a Holiday Apartment https://qualla.com/crownhill-fort/ Photo credit Jandace, CC BY-SA 3.0. Today Crownhill is part museum, part wedding venue, part holiday let: a holiday apartment inside the Victorian barracks sleeps up to eight. The fort opens to the public on the last Friday of each month, January through November. On event days the working artillery is fired, recre...

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Image: Jandace | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/b/v/n/crownhill-fort-wp/gbvn-crownhill-fort-a-disappearing-gun-and-a-holiday-apartment.mp3 0:06 5 full