The Royal Navy had begun establishing itself in and around the town, especially at Convict Bay, but had longer-term plans for a dockyard and naval base at the opposite end of the archipelago.

This also opened up the West End of Bermuda, where the Royal Navy had already begun purchasing land around the Great Sound and Hamilton Harbour, to access by large vessels.

Mount Wyndham was "granted by" the House of Assembly in 1812, and St. John's Hill (which was still being rented by the Admiralty, but had been sitting vacant) was adapted to a naval hospital during a yellow fever epidemic that year.

[3] With the development of the Royal Naval Dockyard underway at Ireland Island, Bermuda, Mount Wyndham was unable to provide visibility of the base or the Great Sound, where a new anchorage would be located at Grassy Bay.

However, the blockade of the Atlantic Seaboard harbours of the United States during the American War of 1812 was orchestrated from Mount Wyndham, as was the punitive raid on the Chesapeake Bay in 1814 that included the Burning of Washington.

Although the foreshore and the eastern slope of Clarence Hill were to be designated a botanical and biological preserve, the campus plan was protested by the Admiralty House Park Association, which included local residents, and by the organisations already based on the property.