Cache placed in co-ordination with the Friends of Shoreham Fort.
When searching do not damage the Fort in anyway please. Use minimal force when moving items the cache may be hidden under or behind.
This cache is placed in Shoreham fort. It was built in 1857.
The fort was built as a deterant to possible invading French people in the 19th Century. The idea of building the forts came about in the 1850's. The fort is just one of a number of forts built along the coast, and its design was based on the one at Littlehampton which was finished just 3 years before. Shoreham was built at a cost of £11,685. The main differences between the two is that Shoreham has caponniers instead of open bastions. And that Shoreham had 6 gun emplacements unlike Littlehampton's 5.
Shoreham Fort once consisted of a gun platform 15 ft (4.6m) above sea level and was in the shape of a lunette, that is a straight sided crescent. The gun platform and ramparts were surrounded by a ditch, with a Carnot wall running along its centre, designed to halt attackers attempting to cross the ditch. The wall itself had loopholes for defenders to fire through. In the place of the open bastions at the Littlehampton fort Shoreham had a caponnier with a brick roof at each of the three angles of the walls. This meant that riflemen could fire along the walls at besiegers in the ditch. The central caponnier straddled the ditch and was connected to the fort by a tunnel under the gun platform and ramparts. The East and West caponniers doubled as latrines. A barrack block at the rear had room for 38 men. The fort was armed with six 68 pounder guns on traversing platforms.
In 2013, a Nissen hut has been erected on one of the original WW2 Nissen hut bases. The Nissen hut was taken down in Chidham near Chichester and taken over to the fort and re-erected. It now stands as an education centre and as an indoor space to keep dry and warm in when events or tours are taking place. It has recently been confirmed as the only usable WW1 Nissen Hut in the UK.
The cache is a small micro and has only room for the logbook in it.
The Fort is most likely to be busy on a Sunday due to restoration work carried out by volunteers from Friends of Shoreham Fort (including me). Tours of the Fort are normally at 2pm every other Sunday and they are free. You may also be watched by those in the lookout station run by the NCI. They are all volunteers and look over the water (and land) in replacement for the loss of coastguard stations around the UK. You are able to go in and see what they do in the station.