Lumps Fort is a disused fortification built on

Portsea Island Portsea Island is a flat and low-lying natural island in area, just off the southern coast of Hampshire in England. Portsea Island contains the majority of the city of Portsmouth. Portsea Island has the third-largest population of all th ...

as part of the defences for the naval base at Portsmouth.

Early history

Lumps Fort dates from the 18th century. The earliest reference is in the records of the Board of Ordnance in 1805 which mention "Lumps Fort-three 32-pounder guns".English Heritage - Lumps Fort"
/ref> By 1822 the fort was the site of a semaphore station on the semaphore line from London to Portsmouth. It was constructed here to avoid the smog of the town of Portsmouth which would impede direct optical communications from

Portsdown Hill Portsdown Hill is a long chalk ridge in Hampshire, England. The highest point of the hill lies within Fort Southwick at 131m above sea level. The ridge offers good views to the south over Portsmouth, the Solent, Hayling Island and Gosport, wit ...

. The fort was out of use as a defensive fort by the 1820s and in 1827 part of the fort fell into the sea. The semaphore station was closed in 1847 when the electrical telegraph took over.

Palmerston-era reconstruction

The fort was reconstructed between 1859 and 1869 as one of the

Palmerston forts The Palmerston Forts are a group of forts and associated structures around the coasts of the United Kingdom and Ireland. The forts were built during the Victorian period on the recommendations of the 1860 Royal Commission on the Defence of the ...

in the line of

Portsmouth Harbour Portsmouth Harbour is a biological Site of Special Scientific Interest between Portsmouth and Gosport in Hampshire. It is a Ramsar site and a Special Protection Area. It is a large natural harbour in Hampshire, England. Geographically it ...

defences. It was designed to be fitted with 17 guns and had a barrack block at the rear to accommodate 100 men. It was not normally manned, with only a Master Gunner normally in residence at the Fort - in 1885 the Master Gunner was H Orchard. It was also used by units of the Volunteer Artillery - the City of London Artillery Volunteers undertook gun practise from there in 1889. Gun position, Southsea Rose Garden, 2016

Gun position, Southsea Rose Garden, 2016

It was re-armed in the 1890s with three 6-inch

rifled breech-loader A rifled breech loader (RBL) is an artillery piece which, unlike the smoothbore cannon and rifled muzzle loader (RML) which preceded it, has rifling in the barrel and is loaded from the breech at the rear of the gun. The spin imparted by the gun ...

Mk. IV guns on hydropneumatic carriages. These guns were taken away in 1906, but the fort was rearmed in 1914. It was then a beach defence battery and was armed with a 6-pounder Hotchkiss anti-aircraft gun. At the end of the

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

, it was demolished, leaving only an outline. Lumps fort from the air 1945

Post-military use

The fort was bought by Portsmouth City Council in 1932. World War II interrupted plans to develop the site. In 1942, the Combined Operations Development Centre's Experimental Party, and soon after, the Royal Marine Boom Patrol Detachment, a specialist unit which also developed and trained in Sleeping Beauties and Boom Patrol Boats, began operations from the fort atterly moving to Teignmouth, S.Devon The detachment was based in two

Nissen hut A Nissen hut is a prefabricated steel structure for military use, especially as barracks, made from a half-cylindrical skin of Corrugated galvanised iron, corrugated iron. Designed during the First World War by the American-born, Canadian-British ...

s outside the fort adjacent to the car park as well as within the fort itself, and initially trained in the Solent making almost daily canoe boom patrol paddles to the Isle of Wight. It went on to conduct

Operation Frankton Operation Frankton was a commando raid on ships in the German occupied French port of Bordeaux in southwest France during the Second World War. The raid was carried out by a small unit of Royal Marines known as the Royal Marines Boom Patrol ...

, on axis shipping at

Bordeaux Bordeaux ( , ; Gascon oc, Bordèu ; eu, Bordele; it, Bordò; es, Burdeos) is a port city on the river Garonne in the Gironde department, Southwestern France. It is the capital of the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region, as well as the prefect ...

harbour. After the war, it was planted as a rose garden, with the Eastern part of the site becoming the Southsea Model Village Adjacent to the site is the Canoe Lake, constructed from a large area of marshland, which was opened on 17 June 1886 and used as a boating lake. During World War II, the lake was used for experiments into countermeasures against

magnetic mine A naval mine is a self-contained explosive device placed in water to damage or destroy surface ships or submarines. Unlike depth charges, mines are deposited and left to wait until they are triggered by the approach of, or contact with, any ...

sKen Ford (p.12)

References

Publications

* Moore, David, 2013. ''Portsmouth Lines and Southsea Defences'', Solent Papers Number 12, David Moore, Gosport.

External links

Victorian Forts data sheet
{{coord, 50.7811, -1.0680, type:landmark_region:GB, display=title Palmerston Forts Forts in Portsmouth