Monument MPM49 - Lumps Fort

A mid-19th century fort which replaced an earlier work. Possibly the site of an open gun emplacement in the 16th century. The site was purchased by Portsmouth City Council in 1933 and is used as a rose garden and model village. Surviving features belonging to the 19th century Lumps Fort include gun emplacements, a section of red brick loop-holed wall in the northwest corner of the rose garden, the barrack block, musketry caponiers and depression range finder. Lumps Fort was previously included on the City of Portsmouth Local List of Buildings of Special Architectual and Historic Interest but was designated a Scheduled Monument in 2025.

A mid-19th century construction which replaced an earlier work. Possibly the site of an open gun emplacement in the 16th century. [1]

The earliest known fortification to occupy the site was a circular redoubt constructed of earthworks and stakes in 1545 to prevent a beach landing to the east of the newly built Southsea Castle [2]. There is no fortification at Lumps on Edwards 1716 map of Portsea Island, but one is marked on an Ordnance Office map of 1773 [3, 4]. The site was used during the Napoleonic Wars and the fort was rebuilt between 1859 and 1861. The new fort was defended on the seaward side (front) by a wet ditch flanked by three caponiers, several gun emplacements and an earthen glacis. Gun emplacements were also mounted on the east and west sides of the fort. The ditch was not as wide or deep on the landward side (rear) where the fort was protected by an earthen parapet with a pierced/loop-holed brick wall. The officer's and men's quarters and the entrance gate were located at the rear of the fort. During the First World War anti-aircraft defences were added and two movable beam searchlights mounted to illuminate the water to the east of Southsea Castle. [2]

Lumps Fort was purchased from the War Office by Portsmouth City Council in 1932 for £25,000, on the condition that it was only to be used for 'recreation, parks, pleasure grounds, winter gardens, baths, or similar public purposes, and any buildings to be erected thereon will only be buildings which are usually erected in connection with the use of land for such purposes' [5]. Various development schemes were proposed during the 1930s but none had been agreed by the time war broke out in 1939 [6]. In July 1942 the fort was used as the training base for the Royal Marine Boom Patrol Detachment, otherwise known as the 'Cockleshell Heroes'. The moat was later infilled using bricks and rubble from bomb damaged buildings [2].

The rose garden which now occupies the centre of the fort was laid out between 1951 and 1953. The main entrance to the garden is on the seaward side through the former central musketry caponier, the top of which has been removed. The ramparts on this side of the fort have been terraced with steps leading to benches at the top. The model village which is situated within the southwestern part of the fort was opened in 1956 and is one of only two coastal model villages in the UK (the other is at Skegness). A Japanese Garden was opened on the east side of the fort to celebrate the twinning of Portsmouth with the City of Maizuru in 2000. It was designed by Japanese garden designer Takashi Sawano. A large stone to the left of a japanese shelter in the garden is from the 16th century Tanabe Castle in Maizuru. [6]

The sundial in the centre of the rose garden had previously been recorded in a report on the monuments and memorials in the city as originally having been located on the Saluting Platform. However, neither the pedestal or the dial appear to be original. The pedestal was probably replaced when the sundial was moved from the Saluting Platform to Pembroke Gardens around the early 1900s and the sundial appears to have been replaced around the 1980s. See record MPM1887.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Victorian fort bought by City Council in 1932. Much of the central part of the Fort survives, but the moat has been infilled and other features dismantled. Parts of fort used as rose garden and model village. E.H. National Parks & Gardens Register. [7]

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A report of 1805 in the records of the Board of Ordnance indicates the likelihood of an open battery having been built on the site during the Napoleonic Wars. This fell into disuse and deteriorated to such an extent that it was not worth remodelling, and was instead used as the site for a new construction. This new work provided 14 guns in embrasures and three en barbette, surrounded by a rampart and ditch. The fort was abandoned at the end of World War I and was subsequently removed by the development of Southsea promenade. The outer works remain and are incorporated into public gardens. (1963, 69, 79). The site was first documented in AD 1281 as LUMPE (Associated with Lumpe family/a later fort). As at 1st December 1902 armed with 2 x 6 inch breech-loading guns. [8]

Hampshire AHBR record 19070, data supplied 2014

Sources given:
Ordnance Survey Archaeology Branch Record Card
Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England, 1996, RCHME Medieval Settlement Project



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The following information is recorded in the Scheduled Monument record for Lumps Fort.


History
The Royal Commission fortifications are a group of related sites established in response to the 1859 Royal Commission report on the defence of the United Kingdom. There were eventually some 70 forts and batteries in England which were due wholly or in part to the Royal Commission. These constitute a well-defined group with common design characteristics, armament and defensive provisions. Whether reused or not during the C20, they are the most visible core of Britain's coastal defence systems and are known colloquially as `Palmerston's follies' after Lord Palmerston (1784-1865) who was Prime Minister at the time.

Lumps Fort, constructed between 1859 and 1861, so slightly preceding the Royal Commission but included in its overall plan for the defence of Portsmouth, followed a succession of batteries on the coast to the east of Southsea Castle. These dated back to 1539 and were built to protect the eastern seaward approach to Portsmouth and prevent any landing at Southsea Common which would threaten the city and its dockyards from the south. The exact location of the first of these fortifications, Chatterton’s Bulwark built in 1539, is uncertain but it is shown in the Cowdray engraving depicting the Battle of the Solent in 1545 (copied from a lost painting commissioned shortly after the battle) and was probably in the vicinity of Lumps Farm, named for Ralph Lumpe who acquired the farm land in 1284.

The next battery to defend this part of the shore between Southsea Castle and Fort Cumberland (1747-1748) was Lumps Farm Battery, built in 1765 as a pair with Eastney Battery further to the east. A plan of 1773 shows Lumps Farm Battery to have been a three-sided masonry fortification built near the shore-line with four embrasures in each of the sides for fire along the beach rather than out to sea. A rectangular earthwork and dry ditch protected the three landward sides of the battery. However, by around 1810 coastal erosion had rendered both Eastney Battery and Lumps Farm Battery untenable and they were disarmed. By the time of the 1838 Portsea Island tithe map the front portion of Lumps Farm Battery is shown to have been lost to the sea. Proposals in the mid-1840s and late-1850s for replacement batteries came to nothing.

In July 1857 a report by the Inspector-General Fortifications, Sir John Fox Burgoyne highlighted the importance of the defence of Portsmouth and included proposals by his assistant, Major William Jervois, for the strengthening of the city’s fortifications. This included a plan for three new batteries between Southsea Castle and Fort Cumberland. Those at Lumps Farm and Eastney were to be ‘keeps’ with accommodation for a garrison while the third one, nearest Fort Cumberland, would be manned from the fort. The keeps ‘would be for nine guns each, with accommodation under the terre-plein for 100 men, provided with full revetments, 27 feet high, flanked by small caponieres, and covered by an earthen glacis to the front. The guns would fire through embrasures, and would bear on the beach on either side, and on boats or vessels approaching the shore. To the rear would be a projection in the centre of the work, containing officers' quarters, on top of which three or four guns could be placed, affording a reverse fire on `any scattered parties of the enemy which might succeed in getting on shore’. An amended proposal by Jervois in December 1857 relocated the keeps further away from the shore, increased the guns to 12 and proposed a series of open-backed shoreline batteries to their front. The plan for these additional batteries was subsequently abandoned and Lumps Fort was to be sited as per the Major Jervois original proposal near the shoreline.

The tender for the new Lumps Fort was advertised on 20 October 1859 and won by Messrs Booth and Rogers of Gosport with the earthworks subcontracted to Mr Edward Custance. The work was overseen by Captain Fowler of the Royal Engineers. The completed fort was handed over to the Royal Artillery by the Royal Engineers on 14 May 1861, with the construction having cost £18,945.

As described in an article in the Portsmouth Times and Navy Gazette on 22 December 1862, the fort had a symmetrical D-shaped trace consisting of a four-sided earthwork rampart (approximately 200 yards wide by 75 yards deep) with a surrounding wet ditch, which drew its water via a sluice and culvert from the sea. The two faces of the rampart facing the coast met at an obtuse angle with flanking faces to the east and west. The gorge was closed by a ten foot, six-inch high, loop-holed, brick wall. The centre of the gorge was occupied by an arrow-shaped projecting barrack block, 100 feet long, which was also loop-holed for defence.

At the three salient angles of the ramparts, raised ‘Cavalier’ gun emplacements were positioned to mount traversing guns en-barbette (firing over the parapet rather than through an embrasure) on ‘C’ pivot mountings. Below these, in the ditch, three musketry caponiers were provided for local defence. On each of the two front faces, equally spaced between the Cavalier positions, were three ‘A’ pivot traversing gun positions firing through embrasures. Each of the flanks had four more ‘A’ pivot traversing gun positions, also firing through embrasures. The guns were served by local expense magazines, ammunition recesses and artillery stores built within the shoulders of the earthworks, To the rear, adjacent to the gorge wall at each end of the earthworks were positioned two brick-built casemated magazines within earth covered mounds. The entrance, on the western side of the barrack block, was reached over a drawbridge crossing the ditch. The barrack block accommodated 40 men plus an officer and officer’s servant. The initial armament, consisting of four smooth-bore (SB) 8-inch Shell guns (two on each of the flanks) and 13, 68pdr SB guns, was installed in June 1861. By 1862 two of the 68pdr guns had been replaced by 7-inch rifled breech-loading (RBL) guns. In 1888 the Defence Committee recommended that Lumps Fort (which was now armed with eight 64pdr RMLs, three 7-inch RBLs and a 7-inch rifled muzzle loader) be armed with two 6-inch BL Mk IV guns on hydro-pneumatic disappearing mountings. This new armament was installed in concrete emplacements and by 1900 all the other guns had been removed. In 1903 a third disappearing 6-inch RBL position was created, set between the first two, although the actual gun may never have been installed as they were phased out after 1905. By April 1907 the fort was completely disarmed but two Defence Electric Light (DEL) searchlight emplacements were built at the western end of the south rampart. These illuminated the sea in front of boom defences which the Admiralty installed by 1909. During the First World War the fort was the site of a single 6-pr Hotchkiss quick-firing (QF) anti-aircraft gun mounted on the ramparts. The DEL emplacements remained in use.

During the 1860s a practice battery was added to the fort to allow Artillery Volunteers to perform live firing at sea targets. The battery was positioned on the glacis of the fort near the western caponier and consisted of a number of 18ft by 12ft ground platforms, without any earthworks. The platforms were made up of thick stone slabs on which were positioned wooden, four truck, Garrison Carriages. The practice battery was updated in August-September of 1901 with new concrete positions built for two 5-inch BL guns on Vavasseur mountings at a cost of £299.

In 1932 Lumps Fort was sold to the Portsmouth Corporation for £25,000 for recreational use with initial plans for a lido subsequently followed by one for a mixed development of lido, Winter Garden, open air theatre and tennis courts, a proposal for a memorial garden to King George V and lastly another pair of mixed use schemes. However, no development had taken place before the outbreak of the Second World War when initially, the underground parts of the fort were used as air raid shelters for up to 400 people. Later in the war it was used as the headquarters of the Royal Marine Boom Patrol Detachment, the code name for the Commando unit which undertook Operation Frankton, a submarine and canoe-borne raid on German shipping on the River Gironde in France in December 1942, an action later memorialised as the ‘Cockleshell Heroes’.

After World War II, between 1951 and 1953, the interior of fort was landscaped to provide a public garden and in 1955 the western portion of the site was leased to a private developer, Mr R Frost of Herne Hill, for the creation of a model village which opened in 1957. A Japanese garden designed by Takashi Sawano was added to the east of the Rose Garden in 2000.


Details
PRINCIPAL ELEMENTS

The site comprises a D-shaped enceinte of four earthen ramparts and a brick wall enclosing the gorge with its centrally placed fortified brick barrack block. The surrounding ditch no longer survives. Built into the ramparts are two expense magazines and three later semi-circular, concrete-lined, gun emplacements. At the outer angles of the ramparts are two brick caponiers, the third, central one, may survive below ground level. To the rear of the parade ground, now partly a landscaped public garden and partly a commercial model village, are a pair of main magazines. To the south-west of the fort are the remains of a practice battery.

DESCRIPTION

The four-sided ramparts are of grass-covered earthen construction and consist of two front ramparts facing the sea, meeting at a shallow angle, and two side ramparts. The ramparts are around 5.5m in height on the external face of the two south-facing front ramparts but the side ramparts are much reduced in height due to later landscaping works and have been lost entirely in the north-east corner where there is a later entrance. The original form of the parapet and embrasures to the ramparts has been lost. At the intersections of the front and side faces are two raised mounds which formed the ‘Cavalier’ gun positions. At the angle of the southern ramparts, a gap for a later entrance has been excavated through the ramparts. Below this the central caponier may survive below ground level. Some, probably original, bricked up structures survive in the inner face of the ramparts to the east of the entrance. Another later entrance has been created through the ramparts on the western side to provide an entrance to the model village.

Extending out from the south-east and south-west corners of the ramparts, and angled to provide fire along both the front and flanking ramparts, are the two complete surviving caponiers. These are of red brick laid in English bond with Portland stone quoins, capping and loophole surrounds. accessed via a vaulted, brick-lined tunnel from the interior of the fort. These have arched openings with sloping brick revetments on either side. The loopholes to both caponiers are largely obscured to lintel height by earth from the infilled ditch.

Built into the inner face of the ramparts, at the intersection of the front and side faces beneath the cavalier mounds, are the two original brick expense shell and cartridge stores. These have segmental arched openings and vaulted interiors. Also set into the inner face of the ramparts are three concrete six-inch breech-loading hydro-pneumatic (BLHP) gun emplacements. These are semi-circular in plan with angled sloping retaining walls, shell lockers (without fittings) and some iron fixing rings. The western emplacement is partially buried. The two eastern emplacements contain modern timber gazebos in their interiors. To the west of the western emplacement is a concrete Depression Range Finder (DRF) gun control position. The eastern DRF may survive in undergrowth. To the west of the easternmost BHLP emplacement, on the top of the rampart, is an octagonal concrete base for a First World War 6-pr Hotchkiss quick-firing (QF) anti-aircraft gun.

The northern face of the fort (the gorge) consists of a 3.2m high, bastion-trace, red brick wall with strategically-placed rifle loop-holes. The wall is of English bond with semi-circular section brick capping and with a projecting, centrally placed, defended barrack block. The original entrance to the fort is located just to the west of the barrack block and has the original Portland stone gate piers with plinth and cap. A metal plaque, dating from 1992, set into the western gate pier commemorates the Cockleshell Heroes.

The single-storey barrack block is pentagonal in plan and set forward to defend the length of the gorge wall. It is of red brick laid in English bond with yellow brick and Portland stone dressings and parapet to the flat roof. The two forward facing north elevations each are of four bays with timber-framed sash windows with rubbed yellow brick heads. One of the windows on the western front wall has been replaced by a modern doorway but the original lintel remains. The side elevations each have three rifle loop-holes. The parade ground (south) elevation is of nine bays (three entrances and six windows) and has fenestration and entrances set in full height round-arched openings. The interior retains its cast iron columns and jack-arched ceiling to the main space, as well as at least one set of armoured window shutters. Adjoining the barrack block to the east is a modern, single-storey, rendered-brick, block on the site of the original latrines.

To the west of the barrack block, in the north-west corner of the original parade ground, is one of the two main magazines. This is a rectangular brick structure with a vaulted roof and Portland stone dressings and is matched by its pair in the north-east corner of the fort.

The original parade ground of the interior of the fort is now divided into two with the eastern part containing a landscaped public garden. Roughly the western third of the interior is occupied by the Southsea Model Village.

Apart from on the northern side, the fort is bounded by iron railings. Outside the southern boundary of the fort are the remains of the practice battery. This consists of a mound topped with thick undergrowth. Aerial photographs suggest that the stone-flagged inclined gun platforms survive.

[9]

<1> Portsmouth City Council, n/a, Portsmouth City SMR Cards (Index). SPM1.

<2> Moore, David, 2013, Solent Papers No 12: Portsmouth Lines and Southsea Defences (Bibliographic reference). SPM497.

<3> Edwards, 1716, Portsea Island (Map). SPM561.

<4> Ordnance office, 1773, Plan of the Island of Portsea (Cartographic materials). SPM416.

<5> Gates, William G, 1936, City of Portsmouth Corporation Records 1931-1935 (Bibliographic reference). SPM355.

<6> Baynes, Jackie, 2017, Guns and Roses The Story of Lumps Fort and Canoe Lake Park: Their History & Development Over Five Centuries (Bibliographic reference). SPM560.

<7> Portsmouth City Council, 2011, City of Portsmouth Local List of Buildings (Bibliographic reference). SPM37.

<8> Hampshire County Council, 2014, Hampshire Archaeology and Historic Buildings Record (AHBR) (Index). SPM171.

<9> Historic England, The National Heritage List for England (Index). SPM35.