Fort Tourgis

Alderney's Victorian forts were designed to defend the island and its harbour, which was planned to accommodate a British fleet to respond to French naval power in the Channel.

From 1860, advances in weapons, particularly the rise of rifled ordnance, and ironclad ship design, made the island's 18 forts and batteries, and the new harbour, increasingly obsolete.

Military History From July 1940, after Alderney and the other Channel Islands had been occupied by the Germans, the defenses were designed both to protect the sea route from Cherbourg to St Malo, and to resist potential British assault to recapture the only part of the British Isles to be occupied by Germany.

Cambridge Battery (No.2) is an excellent example of how the original Victorian fortifications were adapted by German forces in the Second World War, when Alderney became one of the most heavily fortified sections of Hitler's Atlantic Wall.

Since 1945, the growth of scrub over the fort offers ideal habitat for invertebrates, small mammals, and birds.

Kestrels use the musketry loops in the eastern wall to nest, with the fields and grassland outside as their hunting grounds.

The extent and concentration of concrete structures built by the occupying forces has, through time, become home to a wide range of wildlife.

Ranging from barn swallows (which often nest in this tunnel) to a UK rarity, the Bloxworth snout moth, these spaces provide the ideal habitat, and a perfect place for those wishing to observe them.

This part of the fort, used for storing powder, shells and shot, would have supplied Cambridge Battery and was constructed to be secure and dry.

2) Battery at Fort Tourgis mounted eight smooth-bore 68- pounders and 32-pounders, firing spherical solid or explosive shot The powder charges would have been made up in the magazine and packed into sacks.

The guns were mounted on heavy timber platforms that rotated on iron pivots with small metal wheels.

The bunker stands in a position once occupied by a Victorian heavy gun, which was mounted on a pivot and racer now buried under the concrete.

Several species such as kestrel, buzzard, meadow pipit, stonechat, and white-toothed shrew have taken up residence in the fort.

From the outside, the caponier is clearly part of the Victorian defenses, and would have featured musketry loopholes to enable fire along the walls of the fort, protecting them from assault.

They are an essential part of the defenses of Fort Albert, a later and more modern design, where the deep ditch is defended by five caponiers.

This bunker of an unknown type was of Reinforced Field Order standard being constructed with concrete over one meter thick.

For example, the development of the tank and amphibious assault using landing craft required heavy beach defenses and anti-tank guns.