Bayard's Cove Fort, also known historically as Berescove or Bearscore Castle,[1] is an English 16th-century artillery blockhouse, built to defend the harbour entrance at Dartmouth in Devon.

Constructed in the early part of the century, it had eleven gunports for heavy artillery and was intended to engage enemy vessels that broke past the external defences of the Dartmouth and Kingswear castles.

[4] It is uncertain precisely when Bayard's Cove Fort was built: historians suggest that it was either started in 1509–10 at the beginning of Henry VIII's reign, following a royal instruction to the water bailiff of Dartmouth, or in 1529 by the town in response to fears of a French and Spanish attack.

[5] The fort was certainly complete by 1537; Thomas Howard, the Earl of Surrey, may have been referring to it in 1522, when he reported the "blockhouse of stone" in Dartmouth, guarding a well defended harbour, and the antiquarian John Leland described it two decades later as forming "a fair bulwark made of late".

[6] The fort was positioned at one end of a new quay built along the harbour, near the entrance to the estuary, and was intended to engage any hostile ships that evaded the guns of Dartmouth and Kingswear castles.

[10] In January 1646, Sir Thomas Fairfax led a Parliamentary army to retake Dartmouth, seizing Bayard's Cove Fort and the five iron artillery guns stationed there by the Royalists to protect the estuary.