History
The fort proper was originally armed on the Eastern side in the 1870s with two 9-inch rifled muzzle-loading guns on "Moncrieff" disappearing carriages, the only such arrangement in the UK. From about 1906 the armament consisted of two modern 6-inch Mark VII breechloading naval guns, and two modern light QF 12-pounder guns for defence against torpedo boats.
The main 6-inch Mark VII guns were replaced in 1941 by a battery of 6-inch Mark 24 guns (a modern coast-defence version of the Mark VII built during World War II), which were located west of the fort.
The Army vacated the fort in 1962. Restoration began in 1982 following a failed commercial redevelopment venture, and 6-inch Mk VII guns have been re-installed in the fort to approximate the 1906 - 1941 armament. The fort is preserved and maintained by Lewes District Council as Newhaven Fort.
Read more about this topic: Newhaven Fort
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“There is one great fact, characteristic of this our nineteenth century, a fact which no party dares deny. On the one hand, there have started into life industrial and scientific forces which no epoch of former human history had ever suspected. On the other hand, there exist symptoms of decay, far surpassing the horrors recorded of the latter times of the Roman empire. In our days everything seems pregnant with its contrary.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“There has never been in history another such culture as the Western civilization M a culture which has practiced the belief that the physical and social environment of man is subject to rational manipulation and that history is subject to the will and action of man; whereas central to the traditional cultures of the rivals of Western civilization, those of Africa and Asia, is a belief that it is environment that dominates man.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)
“The history of the past is but one long struggle upward to equality.”
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902)