Qualla: Fort Belan https://qualla.com/fort-belan en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:13 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_res/siteimages/rsslogo.png Qualla: Fort Belan https://qualla.com/fort-belan Fort Belan: Introduction https://qualla.com/fort-belan/ Thomas Wynn was nervous. The American War of Independence had begun the year before, and the Member of Parliament for Caernarfonshire could not stop thinking about the long, undefended coast at the foot of his estate. American privateers were already raiding the Irish Sea. So in 1775, on his own dime and with no official authorisation, Wynn built himself a fort. Squat, stone-walled, bristling with cannon, Fort Belan still stands on the wind-flattened tip of the Dinlle Peninsula - the only purpose-built fortification of the American Revolution anywhere on the eastern side of the Atlantic Ocean.

Read more: Fort Belan on Qualla

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/k/y/fort-belan-wp/gcky-fort-belan-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Fort Belan: The Nervous MP https://qualla.com/fort-belan/ The location made strategic sense. The Menai Strait narrows here to roughly 35 metres, the choke point between Caernarfon Bay and the channel that runs the length of Anglesey. Whoever holds Belan controls the southwestern entrance to the strait. The tide enforces the geography tw...

Read more: Fort Belan on Qualla

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/k/y/fort-belan-wp/gcky-fort-belan-the-nervous-mp.mp3 0:06 2 full Fort Belan: A Private Palace in Disguise https://qualla.com/fort-belan/ The Wynn family kept the fort in the family, and in the 1820s turned it into something stranger: a private fortress for personal use. Major works between 1824 and 1826 added a small harbour for Spencer Wynn's steam yacht. The walls rise twenty feet of stone; the inner buildings r...

Read more: Fort Belan on Qualla

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/k/y/fort-belan-wp/gcky-fort-belan-a-private-palace-in-disguise.mp3 0:06 3 full Fort Belan: Yachts, Cranes, and Royalty https://qualla.com/fort-belan/ By 1907, when Sir Ralph Payne-Gallwey came to describe the place, Fort Belan had become a working private dockyard - dock, workshops for repairing vessels, marine storehouses, winches, cranes. The fort had quietly converted from coastal defence into the most elaborate seaside gar...

Read more: Fort Belan on Qualla

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/k/y/fort-belan-wp/gcky-fort-belan-yachts-cranes-and-royalty.mp3 0:06 4 full Fort Belan: Standing at the Choke Point https://qualla.com/fort-belan/ What survives at Belan is a Grade I listed monument to a particular kind of British eccentricity: a private fort that took itself seriously enough to stand for two and a half centuries, watching a strait that needed no watching. Look at it from the air and the strategic logic is ...

Read more: Fort Belan on Qualla

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/k/y/fort-belan-wp/gcky-fort-belan-standing-at-the-choke-point.mp3 0:06 5 full