Fort Pitt, Kent
In June 1801, however, the Depôt was removed to Parkhurst on the Isle of Wight (to be closer to Spithead, the usual embarkation point for troops serving overseas).
[1][8] A further concern (with the potential of invasion in mind) was to guard the approaches to Rochester Bridge, which was a key river crossing on the most direct route from the south-east coast to London.
[1] It has been described as a 'remarkable hybrid':[9] it was among the very last bastioned forts to be built in England (as the style was by then obsolescent), but integrated into its form were multi-storey brick gun towers, representing the latest fashion in fortification.
Formed of a combination of red-brick walls and earthworks, the fort was surrounded by a 15 feet (4.6 m) deep defensive trench, beyond which was a substantial glacis.
[10] A ravelin was built across the ditch to the south (and connected to the fort by a caponier); within the walls at this point were a pair of cavaliers (raised gun platforms).
In line with the tower to the north, projecting out from the fortification like a hornwork, was a detached blockhouse containing casemated barracks with accommodation for up to 500 soldiers.
[1] Its function was described in 1822 as follows: 'Fort Pitt, scarped with masonry and bastioned [...] is the largest of all the works which cover Chatham, and the nearest to the citadel, the fire of which crosses its own.
In 1819 the Army's Invalid Depôt was moved back from the Isle of Wight to Chatham, and Fort Pitt was repurposed as a medical establishment to treat soldiers prior to their release from service.
Fort Pitt also functioned as the Medical Staff Depôt: 'all candidates for commissions, and young medical officers who had just received commissions, were in the first instance sent down to Fort Pitt; partly in order that, when the exigences of the public service permitted, they might receive a certain amount of training in the special work as army surgeons, and partly also because the Staff Depôt formed a convenient place of residence for them until they could be drafted to their respective destinations'.
The museum and library expanded prodigiously over the years and Fort Pitt became an important centre for the study of military and tropical medicine.
In 1846 the military lunatic asylum was moved out of Fort Clarence (and away from Chatham, to the vacant Naval Hospital complex in Great Yarmouth); the following year a smaller "asylum for insane soldiers" was opened in the north-west corner of Fort Pitt,[20] in a former barrack block,[21] (albeit as a place of 'observation and temporary probation' rather than one of ongoing care and treatment).
)[23] Florence Nightingale described, at that time, the process whereby 'When a ship arrives with invalids, the bedridden are carried to Fort Pitt, and the convalescents are marched to St Mary's Casemates'.
[27] In 1860 Fort Pitt was selected by Florence Nightingale as the initial site for the new Army Medical School;[28] however, this was only a temporary measure pending the imminent opening of a new General Military Hospital at Netley, near Southampton, which took place in 1863.
[32] In October 1914 King George V and Queen Mary visited, meeting servicemen wounded in the First World War, including five German Naval officers held in a separate ward.
[33] In 1929 the Chatham Education Board bought the vacant Fort Pitt from the War Office, and the site was converted into a Girls' Technical School.
The central tower, or keep, was removed in 1910 when the hospital was extended; and the blockhouse was demolished in the early 1930s, to allow the school to expand[4] (the Rochester campus of the University for the Creative Arts now stands on its site).
