Thorn Island
Thorne Island is a rocky islet and part of the community of Angle, Pembrokeshire, Wales, with an area of , dominated by a coastal artillery fort built to defend the Milford Haven Waterway in the mid-19th century. It has been the site of a number of shipwrecks, including one in 1894 that was carrying a cargo of Scotch whisky. History Fortification Thorne Island commands the entrance to the anchorage of Milford Haven and access to the former Royal Dockyard at Pembroke Dock. A proposal was made to fortify the island in 1817, but it was not implemented. In the 1850s, there was growing concern about the increasing strength of the French Navy and the expansionist policy of the Emperor Napoleon III. Work started on the existing fort at some time after 1852 and '1854' is carved above the entrance. The fort is an irregular polygon in plan and was designed with a seaward facing battery for five RBL 7-inch Armstrong guns and four 68-pounder guns, all mounted ''en barbette'' (i.e. in an op ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Angle, Pembrokeshire
Angle ( cy, Angl) is a village, parish and community on the southern side of the entrance to the Milford Haven Waterway in Pembrokeshire, Wales. The village school has closed, as have one of the two pubs, the village shop (with a post office) and St Mary's church. There is a bus link to Pembroke railway station. The Sailors' Chapel, a Grade I listed building, is in the church graveyard.The Benefice Rev. Jones, accessed 30 August 2008 At Castle Farm, there is a and above Castle Bay there are the remains of an fort. On the headland there are visible remains of [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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RBL 7-inch Armstrong Gun
The Armstrong RBL 7-inch gun, also known as the 110-pounder, was an early attempt to use William Armstrong's new and innovative rifled breechloading mechanism for heavy rifled guns. Description The Armstrong "screw" breech mechanism used a heavy block inserted in a vertical slot in the barrel behind the chamber, with a large hollow screw behind it which was manually screwed tight against the block after loading. A metal cup on the front of the block, together with the pressure of the screw behind it, provided "obturation" and sealed the breech to prevent escape of gasses rearward on firing. The sliding-block was known as the "vent-piece", as the vent tube was inserted through it to fire the gun. In modern terms it was a vertical sliding-block. To load the gun, the vent-piece was raised, the shell was inserted through the hollow screw and rammed home into the bore, and the powder cartridge was likewise inserted through the screw into the chamber. The vent-piece was lowered, ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Chislehurst Caves
Chislehurst Caves are a series of intersecting man-made tunnels and caverns covering some 22 miles (35.4 km) in Chislehurst in southeast London, England. From the mid-13th to early 19th centuries the 'caves' were created from the mining of flint and lime-burning chalk. Today the caves are a tourist attraction and although they are called caves, they are entirely man-made and were dug and used as chalk and flint mines. The earliest recorded mention of the mines and lime-burning kilns above dates from a 9th-century Saxon charter and then not again until around 1232AD; they are believed to have been last worked in the 1830s. During World War I the caves were used as an ammunition storage dump associated with the Royal Arsenal at Woolwich. In the 1930s the tunnels were used for mushroom cultivation. Second World War shelter When the aerial bombardment of London began in September 1940, the caves were used as an air-raid shelter. Soon they became an underground city acco ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Andrew Davis (businessman)
Andrew Davis (born 12 February 1964) is a British businessman who founded the von Essen Group, which included Von Essen Hotels, PremiAir and the London Heliport. Early life and career Davis went to St Bede's Comprehensive School. Reigate Grammar School and Caterham College in Surrey, near where his father, Brendon, an executive at a subsidiary of Redland Tiles, and his mother still live. During the early 1990s he was involved in small-scale property development, founding and operating a small helicopter charter business. It has been reported that Davis's first moneymaking business was selling jewellery and silver spoons door-to-door in the West Country. Von Essen Hotels By 2000, Von Essen had three properties: Mount Somerset hotel in Taunton, Congham Hall hotel in Norfolk and New Park Manor in Hampshire. In 2000, it bought Ston Easton Park in Bath and Thornbury Castle in Gloucestershire for around £5m each. Bishopstrow House hotel in Wiltshire was bought in 2001. In 2002 D ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Stack Rock Fort
Stack Rock Fort is a fort built on a small island in the Milford Haven Waterway, Pembrokeshire, Wales. A 3-gun fort was built between 1850 and 1852, and then upgraded from 1859 to 1871 with a new building that completely encased the original gun tower. It is now a Grade II* listed building and a scheduled monument (registered SAM number PE334). History A fortification at Stack Rock was first proposed by Thomas Cromwell in 1539 to protect the waterway, although this would not actually come to fruition at the time. Similar proposals were made in 1748 when Lewis Morris carried out a survey of Milford Haven, reporting on shipwrecks and navigation and recommending that a small fort be built here. Another survey followed in 1817. The Royal Dockyard at Pembroke Dock was felt to be in need of defence from the sea, The result was a tower mounting three guns, similar to the two towers in Pembroke Dock. The tower was oval in section, with a maximum diameter of and a maximum height of . ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Popton Fort
Popton Fort, a Grade II* Listed Building, British Listed Buildings, accessed 08.10.11 is a completed in 1864 as part of the inner line of defence of Milford Haven together with Fort Hubberstone on the opposite bank. Work commenced in 1859, only completed in 1864 at a cost of £76,000.Phillips, Benjamin A ''Pembrokeshire's Forts & Military Airfields 1535 - 2010'', Logaston Press, 2013 It has tapering hexagonal ramparts with pentagonal bastions at the angles ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Fort Hubberstone
Fort Hubberstone, on the west side of Milford Haven, Pembrokeshire, is a Grade II* Listed Building which belongs to a series of forts built as part of the inner line of defence of the Haven following the Royal Commission on the Defence of the United Kingdom. Together with Popton Fort on the opposite shore, it provided an interlocking field of fire, and represented the last layer of defence before reaching the Royal Naval dockyard at Pembroke Dock. Construction began in 1860 and was completed in 1863 at a cost of £55,000.Genealogy World – Fort Hubberstone Mason, Graham, Retrieved 25 December 2013 It is a large , with eleven [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Lord Palmerston
Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston, (20 October 1784 – 18 October 1865) was a British statesman who was twice Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in the mid-19th century. Palmerston dominated British foreign policy during the period 1830 to 1865, when Britain stood at the height of its imperial power. He held office almost continuously from 1807 until his death in 1865. He began his parliamentary career as a Tory, defected to the Whigs in 1830, and became the first prime minister from the newly formed Liberal Party in 1859. He was highly popular with the British public. David Brown argues that "an important part of Palmerston's appeal lay in his dynamism and vigour". Henry Temple succeeded to his father's Irish peerage (which did not entitle him to a seat in the House of Lords, leaving him eligible to sit in the House of Commons) as the 3rd Viscount Palmerston in 1802. He became a Tory MP in 1807. From 1809 to 1828 he served as Secretary at War, organising the finan ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Dale Fort
Dale Fort is a mid-19th-century coastal artillery fort at Dale Head, a rocky promontory near Dale, Pembrokeshire, west of Milford Haven in Wales. It is one of the centres run by Field Studies Council and offers residential and non-residential fieldwork for schools, colleges and universities, holiday accommodation and professional and leisure courses in natural history and arts. History Although there was a proposal for an artillery battery on this site in 1829, the present fort is a result of a recommendation by Sir John Fox Burgoyne, the Inspector-General of Fortifications, in 1850. There is no record of when construction started, but the work was completed by 1858 and a date of 1856 is inscribed above the main gate. The fort was intended to protect the anchorage at the mouth of Milford Haven by providing interlocking fire with the nearby forts at Thorn Island and West Blockhouse. In 1876 there was a recommendation that the fort be re-armed with larger and more modern guns, but ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Royal Commission On The Defence Of The United Kingdom
The Royal Commission on the Defence of the United Kingdom was a committee formed in 1859 to enquire into the ability of the United Kingdom to defend itself against an attempted invasion by a foreign power, and to advise the British Government on the remedial action required. The appointment of the Commission had been prompted by public concern about the growing military and naval power of the French Empire and was instigated by the Prime Minister, Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston, who came to be closely associated with the project. In the following year, the Commission's report recommended a huge programme of fortification to defend the country's arsenals and naval bases. Many of the recommendations were acted upon; however, the great expense, the length of time taken to complete the various works and their perceived usefulness were all subjects of critical political, press and public debate. Background In the late 1850s, there were serious concerns that France might attem ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Loophole
A loophole is an ambiguity or inadequacy in a system, such as a law or security, which can be used to circumvent or otherwise avoid the purpose, implied or explicitly stated, of the system. Originally, the word meant an arrowslit, a narrow vertical window in a wall through which an archer (or, later, gunman) could shoot. Loopholes were commonly used in U.S. forts built during the 1800s. Located in the sally port, a loophole was considered a last ditch defense, where guards could close off the inner and outer doors trapping enemy soldiers and using small arms fire through the slits. Loopholes are distinct from lacunae, although the two terms are often used interchangeably. In a loophole, a law addressing a certain issue exists, but can be legally circumvented due to a technical defect in the law, such as a situation where the details are under-specified. A lacuna, on the other hand, is a situation in which no law exists in the first place to address that particular issue. Use a ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Barrack
Barracks are usually a group of long buildings built to house military personnel or laborers. The English word originates from the 17th century via French and Italian from an old Spanish word "barraca" ("soldier's tent"), but today barracks are usually permanent buildings for military accommodation. The word may apply to separate housing blocks or to complete complexes, and the plural form often refers to a single structure and may be English plurals#Plural in form but singular in construction, singular in construction. The main object of barracks is to separate soldiers from the civilian population and reinforce discipline, training, and ''esprit de corps''. They have been called "discipline factories for soldiers". Like industrial factories, some are considered to be shoddy or dull buildings, although others are known for their magnificent architecture such as Collins Barracks, Dublin, Collins Barracks in Dublin and others in Paris, Berlin, Madrid, Vienna, or London. From the ro ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |