Building
It was envisaged that the line would stretch from the River Medway to the Thames but a shortage of money meant only five of the original large works plus two small experimental earthen redoubts were built. Work, using convict labour, started 30 years later in 1890, but by that time the enemy it was supposed to repulse, France, was an ally, the new enemy was Imperial Germany.
Because of budget restraints and changing fashions in fortifications, no fixed armament was mounted; instead earthen ramps were built to enable field artillery to fire from the fort’s parapet. The fort was a radical departure from traditional design, of earth construction, with a deep dry moat designed to blend in with the line of the land. There were magazines and living quarters under the earthen walls. A new large prison was built on the hill above the nearby village of Borstal to house the workforce. It later became a prison for young offenders and gave its name to the Borstal Institution system of correction.
Read more about this topic: Fort Bridgewood
Famous quotes containing the word building:
“History is a child building a sand-castle by the sea, and that child is the whole majesty of man’s power in the world.”
—Heraclitus (c. 535–475 B.C.)
“There is something about the literary life that repels me, all this desperate building of castles on cobwebs, the long-drawn acrimonious struggle to make something important which we all know will be gone forever in a few years, the miasma of failure which is to me almost as offensive as the cheap gaudiness of popular success.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)
“Writing a book I have found to be like building a house. A man forms a plan, and collects materials. He thinks he has enough to raise a large and stately edifice; but after he has arranged, compacted and polished, his work turns out to be a very small performance. The authour however like the builder, knows how much labour his work has cost him; and therefore estimates it at a higher rate than other people think it deserves,”
—James Boswell (1740–1795)