Radar_station_on_the_headland_-_geograph

HMS ''Cambridge'' was a

Royal Navy The Royal Navy (RN) is the United Kingdom's naval warfare force. Although warships were used by English and Scottish kings from the early medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were fought in the Hundred Years' War against ...

shore establishment A stone frigate is a naval establishment on land. "Stone frigate" is an informal term that has its origin in Britain's Royal Navy after its use of Diamond Rock, an island off Martinique, as a 'sloop of war' to harass the French in 1803–04. ...

south of Plymouth UK, commissioned between 1956 and 2001. Formerly named HM Gunnery School, Devonport, then Cambridge Gunnery School at

Wembury Wembury is a village on the south coast of Devon, England, very close to Plymouth Sound. Wembury is located south of Plymouth. Wembury is also the name of the peninsula in which the village is situated. The village lies in the administrative di ...

. The site was called HMS ''Cambridge'' after a ship of the same name an 80-gun

third-rate In the rating system of the Royal Navy, a third rate was a ship of the line which from the 1720s mounted between 64 and 80 guns, typically built with two gun decks (thus the related term two-decker). Years of experience proved that the third r ...

ship of the line that was used to train seamen in gunnery in Plymouth harbour from 1856. She was replaced by the

first rate In the rating system of the British Royal Navy used to categorise sailing warships, a first rate was the designation for the largest ships of the line. Originating in the Jacobean era with the designation of Ships Royal capable of carrying at ...

HMS ''Windsor Castle'' (renamed HMS ''Cambridge'') in 1869 before the gunnery school was moved onto land at the Plymouth naval barracks in 1907. This lasted until 1940 when a gunnery range used by the army and navy was opened at the old Wembury Point Holiday Camp (on the present site) which was named the Cambridge Gunnery School. In 1956 the school was commissioned as an independent shore establishment and was decommissioned on 30 March 2001. The site was purchased in 2006 by the

National Trust The National Trust, formally the National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty, is a charity and membership organisation for heritage conservation in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. In Scotland, there is a separate and ...

; the main installation, which included mounts for a range of standard naval guns, was demolished and cleared, and the site returned to nature.

References

External links

Royal Naval Gunnery School "HMS Cambridge" – The Encyclopaedia of Plymouth History
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Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a College town, university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cam ...