Qualla: Nothe Fort

Nothe Fort: Introduction

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Taken by Steinsky 7 July 2005 17:25 (UTC) at 07:06, Wed 06 July 2005., CC BY-SA 1.0. On a July night in 1940, two unidentified ships entered Weymouth Bay without showing lights. The gun crews at Nothe Fort fired warning shots over their bow. The vessels switched on every lamp they had: they were refugees from the Channel Islands, fleeing the German occupation of Jersey and Guernsey. It was the fort's only moment of action in either World War. The cannons that the engineers of the 26 Company Royal Engineers had so painstakingly installed seventy years earlier had spent decades waiting for a French invasion that never came - and finally fired in anger at a boatload of frightened civilians.

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Image: Taken by Steinsky 7 July 2005 17:25 (UTC) at 07:06, Wed 06 July 2005. | CC BY-SA 1.0

Nothe Fort: Palmerston's Anxiety

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Stephen and Helen Jones from England, CC BY-SA 2.0. The fort was a product of Victorian Britain's most expensive case of nerves. Lord Palmerston had become convinced in the late 1850s that Napoleon III was about to invade, and the Royal Commission of 1859 recommended a ring of coastal fortifications around every important naval an...

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Image: Stephen and Helen Jones from England | CC BY-SA 2.0

Nothe Fort: Three Levels, Many Guns

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Vsfx, CC BY-SA 3.0. Inside the D, the engineers arranged three storeys for the business of artillery. The deep magazines held the powder. The ground-level casemates held heavy muzzle-loading cannons - two 64-pounders, four 9-inch rifled muzzle loaders, six 10-inch guns - and the soldiers who served ...

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Image: Vsfx | CC BY-SA 3.0

Nothe Fort: A Useful War, Briefly

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Vsfx, CC BY-SA 3.0. By 1938 the army had given up on coastal artillery and converted Nothe into a central anti-aircraft ammunition depot for the southwest of England, complete with electric hoists and a purpose-built loading platform. During the Second World War the fort got its only sustained milit...

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Image: Vsfx | CC BY-SA 3.0

Nothe Fort: Hotel, Ruin, Restoration

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Vsfx, CC BY-SA 3.0. The borough council had no idea what to do with it. Plans were floated to convert it into a luxury hotel - work actually began in 1971 before being abandoned. The building slid into vandalism and rot. In 1980 the Weymouth Civic Society took over the lease and began the slow resto...

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Image: Vsfx | CC BY-SA 3.0

Nothe Fort: Spooks and Olympians

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Vsfx, CC BY-SA 3.0. In 2007 a National Lottery survey voted Nothe one of the spookiest locations in the United Kingdom - a reputation that the bomb-proof casemates, the buried magazines, and the long quiet decades of neglect have all conspired to earn. Then in 2012, the Olympics came to Portland Har...

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Image: Vsfx | CC BY-SA 3.0