Clifford's Fort

It consisted of a raised platform, walled and with a three storey redoubt, protecting a low riverside gun battery,[2] defended to landward by a bastioned trace.

[7] The building of the fort interfered with a lighthouse which had been established on the site by Trinity House of Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1539, and this remained a point of contention in subsequent decades (not least because the force of the guns, when fired, damaged the lantern).

[8] By 1720 the redoubt had been reconstructed to serve as a barracks for a company of Invalids (military veterans who helped man the guns), with a gunpowder magazine in the basement (as shown on a map of 1720 now in the British Library).

The Master Gunner's house at the south-west corner of the site, dating from the mid-18th century, was demolished in 1973 to make way for a fish processing unit.

[12] In 2013 the fort was removed from the Heritage at Risk Register;[13] this followed a £1 million refurbishment scheme, funded by North Tyneside Council and the Heritage Lottery Fund, which completed the restoration of the fort and brought unused buildings back into use (including the Old Low Light, which opened to the public in 2015 as a museum telling the history of the site).