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The first permanent fortification built at Tilbury was a D-shaped blockhouse, commissioned by Henry VII in 1539. During the Spanish Armada threat of the 1580's, a boom of ship's masts, chains and cables, anchored by lighters (flat-bottomed barges), was strung across the Thames at this spot in order to prevent the wicked Spanish from armada-ing their way into London.
The fort was held by Parliamentary forces during the English Civl War (1641-1651), but depsite a light garrison and general neglect, the royalists never attacked it. After the Civil War, Charles II, exiled in Holland, was influenced by the latest designs in fortification and upon his return to England he employed Dutchman Sir Bernard de Gomme to refortify the site.
Work on the current fort was begun in 1670. The original blockhouse was retained, and work, often accomplished by pressing labor from nearby towns, continued into the 1680's.
Scottish prisoners taken at the Battle of Culloden in 1746 were held at Tilbury Fort. Ten armed hulks were arrayed across the Thames in 1803 in an effort to block imagined invasion attempts by the wicked French. The Henry VII-era blockhouse was demolished around 1867.
Tilbury Fort's only military accomplishment came during the First World War, when antiaircraft guns on the fort's parade ground shot down a Zeppelin airship, sent by the wicked Germans. Perhaps in belated retribution, the fort was bombed during the Second World War. The fort was demobilized in 1950, and is open to the public. |
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