Carnot wall

The fort was an innovative military structure, incorporating the new feature of a Carnot wall.

These consisted of massive ramparts with a Carnot wall at their foot.

Today the gun platform, ditch, Carnot wall and caponniers can be seen in their restored state.

A Carnot wall is a type of loop-holed wall built in the ditch of a fort or redoubt.

The objectors did not hold sway indefinitely however and forts with Carnot walls were eventually built in Britain.

The fort was the first of its kind in the United Kingdom; its Carnot wall and three open bastions made it unique.

In his 1849 book James Fergusson outlined the advantages of the Carnot wall, though without wholly endorsing its use.

In 1823 a replica Carnot wall was constructed at Woolwich, Kent to test Carnot's theories.

Following the Royal Commission on the Defence of the United Kingdom of 1859 several forts with Carnot walls were built.

The fort consisted of a platform for the guns with ramparts surrounded by a nine-yard (eight-metre) wide ditch, which incorporated a Carnot wall running along its centre.

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 battery was built to a rectangular plan with no wall along the cliff edge, but moats containing Carnot walls to either side and the rear of the battery.

Whilst the Carnot wall was extensively employed in fortifications in continental Europe there was resistance to its use in Britain, for the reasons stated above.

A notice with a diagram describes what can be seen of the fort, that is the surrounding ditch, one of the bastions, part of the Carnot wall and the ramparts behind.

The first fort to be built in Britain with a Carnot wall was in 1854 at the mouth of the river Arun at Littlehampton in West Sussex.

Today, much of the surrounding Carnot wall has gone but most of the long seaward section remains, together with its two musketry Caponiers, and so gives a good view as to how it looked when it was first built.

Carnot walls were employed, together with other elements of Carnot's system, in continental Europe in the years after the final defeat of Napoleon in 1815, especially by the Prussians, other Germans and Austrians.