More information : TQ 8917 7600: Disused military roadway, formerly linking Grain Fort with Dummy Battery.
This feature survives as a prominent and well-preserved earthwork, some 750m long. Between Grain Fort and Smithfield Road, the 4m-wide road is carried in a cutting, averaging 1.5m in depth. Thereafter, in order to cross Smithfield Marshes to Dummy Battery, the road was placed on a causeway, some 4m wide and up to 2m high.
The roadway was surveyed by the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England between March and April of 1998, following a request from Kent County Council as part of a European project looking at defence sites in Kent, Nord-Pas de Calais and West Flanders. See archive report and plans. (1)
A military road extending for 780m between TQ 8905 7651 and TQ 8923 7575, connecting Grain Fort with Dummy Battery. The road was probably constructed in the 1860's, at much the same time as the two forts. Much of its course survives as a cutting towards its northern end, the southern end carried on an embankment as the ground drops. The western side of Wing Battery abuts the road, being constructed later than the road and both Grain Fort and Dummy Batteries.
The earthwork remains of the road and associated batteries were mapped from aerial photographs as part of the English Heritage: Hoo Peninsula Landscape Project. (2) |