Sunday by the Thames 03/2009

Beware picture heavy
CoalHouse Fort Tilbury

Bit of history fom official site
Coalhouse Fort is a Victorian coastal defence fort set in parkland next to the river Thames at East Tilbury, Essex, completed in 1874, to defend the approaches to London from the perceived threat of invasion from France.

It is one of many such forts, referred to as Palmerston Forts. Over the years many of these forts have been demolished or radically altered but Coalhouse, although modified to take more modern armament, has kept much of its original architectural form.











Spigot mortar mount?

Mine Field control tower



Insides not to pretty


Hinges for steel shutters


Moe pics of the radar tower and quick fire battery when my computer sorts its self out.

Heres some pics of the Quick Fire Battery













more pics to come of my favourite place of the day

radar tower

Wow thats a really nice fort, you can see the similarity with it being a Palmerston Fort, with the use of granite, its of similar design to the Solent Forts and Hurst Castle.
See here for pics;
http://www.soton.ac.uk/~imw/jpg-Hurst/7HS-general-west-castle.jpg
http://www.ecastles.co.uk/seafort.html
http://image09.webshots.com/9/7/78/81/126177881GIXlwU_fs.jpg

Its a nice looking place only open occasionally tho which is a shame as today was not one of those days but got some sneaky inside shots that il post in a min.

Few of inside and couple of outside shots



Main gate








Map of the site

Lovely pics there Weeto, and WOW I have never seen the Quick Fire Battery - how cool is that!

Thanks for sharing and we soooo gotta go and see the inners of Coalhouse Fort!!!!

Wow, such a lot of remains! Even a radar tower!!! Fantastic stuff.
Cheers for that, Weeto.

Strange mix of old and new ( well newish)

Phil

Wow, just wow.

Somewhere else to add to the list of 'things I must see'.

Inside is deffinately on my must see list now not sure when its open except bank holidays tho?
Also appologies for quality of pics (only own a compact digi camera) and no inside shots of the radar tower that will be another day to when i have my brave boots on
Also i added some pics to the tilbury fort report in the heritage section taken on same day.

great place, love the quick fire battery. Would love to see inside the radar tower. Are the building works to preserve the fort or are they trying to use it for some other purpose.

jonney said:

great place, love the quick fire battery. Would love to see inside the radar tower. Are the building works to preserve the fort or are they trying to use it for some other purpose.

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Im unsure but hope its for renovation

Brilliant Pics -is the quickfire battery only open on bank holidays as well?

Great stuff, why does the quick fire battery look to have bullet damage to it? Was it used as a film set or something

godzilla73 said:

Brilliant Pics -is the quickfire battery only open on bank holidays as well?

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No its totally seperate you can access everywhere i went except the sneaky inside shots any day of the year.

mexico75 said:

Great stuff, why does the quick fire battery look to have bullet damage to it? Was it used as a film set or something

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I dont know there was no other info about but il have a search on the net damage is pretty deep tho tbh so i doubt it was used for that although i may be mistaken?

CHF is currently undergoing some major restoration works in conjunction with English Heritage. It's still open to the public on the last Sunday of each month and on Bank holidays, see their website for details www.coalhousefort.co.uk . Inside the fort there are small Military and Aviation Museums (this contains remains of aircraft dug up from along the Thames) you can go on a short guided tour of the 'safe' areas which includes a small part of the roof area and along a short length of the 'tunnels'. An optional tour is also aavailable which deals with 'the paranormal' which takes in a good deal more of the tunnel complex and gives a brief run down of the sightings tha have taken place over the years. The fort is currently maintained by a group of volunteers who give their time to trying to do some maintainence on the fort and to keep it open to the public, they can be found beavering away on a wednesday, if there arnt hoards of people and you speak nicely to them sometimes they will give you a 'private' off the cuff tour, that can be more interesting than the official tours, especially if you hint that you may be interested in helping out!

Have a number of photographs of the Out of Bounds areas of the place that are considered, for good reason, to be to dangerous for the general public to visit will try and put some links on if anyone is interested.

As an aside, the start of Batman Begins was filmed at the fort and remnants from the filming are still there, prison bars etc. Garry Newman shot a Pop Video there some years back and very recently some filming was done at the quick fire battery for the TV series Spooks, watch out for that in the near future.

Would love to see some photo's of the out of bounds areas dsms20. Please post them

see

http://www.coalhousefort.co.uk/web/files/project/at-risk/index_6.html

The top of that mine control tower looks almost identical to the one I found in Methil, Fife (see Methil XDO post thread), wonder why mine's is buried???

Gaz