Forton Gaol Traditional Cache

Forton Gaol

After recently discovering this place (and I've lived in Gosport most of my life!), I couldn't resist placing a Cache here so others could hopefully learn about it.

A prison existed at Forton as early as 1777, (and probably earlier during the Seven Years War according to the Pennysylvania Magazine of History and Biography), when the old 'Fortune Hospital' was used to confine supporters of the American revolution. The hospital, described as 'a shambles no more than a clutter of tumbledown shacks, I doubt if anyone actually got better through the nursing they received there', was an unhealthy straggle of wooden huts and unsightly buildings. Most written sources state that it was erected in 1713 (but it is possible that it was there much earlier) on a marshy site where nowadays Leesland Road meets Lees Lane. A merchant called Nathaniel Jackson won a contract from the Admiralty board to provide accommodation and medical facilities for naval and military men from the Portsmouth area. He seems to have been more interested in making money that providing health care as he paid the medical staff a pittance, thus attracting second rate doctors, and erected buildings of a poor nature. The hospital was to provide beds for 700 sailors from the Royal Navy. After he died (1716?) without issue Nathaniel Jackson's widow, Mary Burrow, claimed ownership of a great number of beds and sheets with other furnitue in proportion for the great number of seamen who were invalids and who by the direction of the government were received and taken care of in this house. In 1725 the Lord Chancellor ruled that she could have them but on appeal to the House of Lords the decision was reversed. Some written histories and websites state that the site of the hospital became the Forton Barracks but it is certain from written evidence and plans that it became Forton Prison.

Source: http://www.gosportsociety.co.uk/fortonprison.htm

Some points of note..

You can still walk around the grounds, which is now the housing estate of Chilworth Grove & Warders Court (Note the name Warders!), and part of the Warders Quarters has now been converted into a Working Mans Club, take a peek round the back and you can see the original building!

Fortune house which stands on the site is named after the old 'Fortune Hospital'.  

At the end of Trafalgar Place is where the Prison Gate would have once stood.

There is a plaque commemorating American POW'S on the external wall, albeit high up and overgrown!

All in all a very interesting part of Gosport, that remains unknown to a lot of people.

This area can get busy, and you will look a little odd looking for the Cache. So stealth WILL be needed!