Qualla: Stack Rock Fort

Stack Rock Fort: Introduction

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Gareth James, CC BY-SA 2.0. Thomas Cromwell wanted a fort built here in 1539. The Tudor king's minister was right about the strategy and three centuries early on the timing. Stack Rock - a sliver of an island in the middle of Milford Haven, almost exactly between the two shores - is the obvious place from which to control the deepest harbour in Britain. But it took until 1850 for the Royal Engineers to start work, and it took an excitable French emperor named Napoleon III to push them into doing it. By the time the fort was finished in 1871, military technology had already outrun its design. The guns it was meant to mount were never installed. It defended the haven against an enemy that never came.

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Image: Gareth James | CC BY-SA 2.0

Stack Rock Fort: Three Centuries of Almost

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Richard Webb, CC BY-SA 2.0. Cromwell's 1539 proposal went nowhere. The Tudor state had other priorities. In 1748 the Welsh polymath Lewis Morris surveyed Milford Haven for shipwrecks and navigation hazards, and recommended a small fort on Stack Rock. Nothing happened. A further survey in 1817 made the same ...

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Image: Richard Webb | CC BY-SA 2.0

Stack Rock Fort: The Tower Inside the Fort

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Steveylids123, CC BY-SA 4.0. The first structure was an elliptical stone tower, 55 feet across at its widest and 30 feet tall, mounting three 32-pounder guns and a 12-pounder for close defence. Construction took two years, finishing in 1852. The tower was barely complete before it became obsolete. In 1858 th...

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Image: Steveylids123 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Stack Rock Fort: Manning the Empty Threat

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ruth Sharville, CC BY-SA 2.0. The French invasion that justified all this expense never came. Napoleon III was defeated by the Prussians in 1870, and his successors had other things to think about. The fort's big rifled muzzle-loaders were replaced in 1902 with four 12-pounder quick-firing guns. During the Fi...

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Image: Ruth Sharville | CC BY-SA 2.0

Stack Rock Fort: Sold, Sold Again

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit User:Alvear24, Public domain. For most of the twentieth century Stack Rock Fort sat empty in the middle of the haven. Birds nested in the casemates. Vegetation grew between the granite. Concerns surfaced periodically about trespassers - in 2013 the proximity to a nearby LNG jetty made unauthorised access a re...

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Image: User:Alvear24 | Public domain

Stack Rock Fort: The View From the Water

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit JKMMX, CC BY-SA 3.0. Stack Rock makes more sense from the water than from anywhere else. The fort sits roughly in the middle of the haven's lower reach, where the channel narrows between Angle Point to the south and the headlands above Sandy Haven to the north. Any ship entering or leaving the haven ...

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Image: JKMMX | CC BY-SA 3.0