Upnor Castle Upnor Castle was built as an
artillery fort between October 1559 and February 1567 in order to protect
Chatham Dockyard and the associated naval
anchorage. It was called into action in June 1667 when the Nederlandse Staatsmarine (Dutch State Navy) conducted a
raid on the ships moored in the river; Upnor Castle proved ineffective in repelling the attack by the Dutch State Navy and it was decommissioned during March 1668. Though Upnor Castle was only operational as an artillery fort for about 100 years, it was retained as a
gunpowder magazine and ammunition store until the end of
World War 1; continuing in military usage through
World War 2, it was opened to the public as a Departmental Museum in October 1945.
Lower Upnor Ordnance Depot Upnor Castle served as a gunpowder magazine for the
Board of Ordnance from 1668, providing powder for the defences of
Chatham Dockyard and for the fleet based in the
Nore. In September 1810 a new magazine with space for 10,000 barrels of gunpowder was built downriver from Upnor Castle (which had long needed to expand its capacity) along with a 'shifting house' for inspecting powder that had arrived by sea (though demolished, its surrounding earthworks traverse is still in evidence, midway between the magazine and Upnor Castle). In April 1856 a second magazine was constructed at Upnor Castle alongside the first, to the same design but with more than double the capacity; (this still stands on the river bank, the earlier magazine having been demolished in November 1964). At the same time, buildings were constructed (alongside the shifting house) for storing and maintaining
artillery shells; but these soon proved too small, so the site began to be extended to the north, where additional shell stores were built from the 1860s onwards. A little further to the north, a group of large houses were bought to serve as offices for the Lower Upnor Ordnance Depot. There was not enough space, though, for further bulk storage of gunpowder, so in 1875 a separate set of five magazines were built, inland at
Chattenden, and linked to Upnor by a
narrow-gauge railway (see below); the Upnor magazines were then converted into filled shell stores. In February 1891 the Ordnance Yards of the
United Kingdom were split between the
Admiralty and the
War Department, Upnor going to the former, Chattenden to the latter. The Admiralty therefore embarked on building a new inland Ordnance Depot, next to Chattenden, at
Lodge Hill; opening in 1898, it dealt principally with
cordite. At Upnor itself further Shell Stores was built in 1883, supplemented by new buildings for storing wet and dry
guncotton (used in
torpedoes and
mines) in 1895. The site was extended further to the north in March 1902 to allow construction of a much larger store for filled shells and another for mines. At the same time a complex of buildings for filling shells with powder (and later also with
trotyl and
amatol) were added behind the original 'A' and 'B' magazines. Meanwhile, the surviving buildings to the north were also being refurbished for light commercial and retail use. The inland British Army Depots or Regimental Depots, latterly known as
Chattenden and Lodge Hill Military Camps, were put up for sale in 2016 by the
Homes England, which is part of the
Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.
Gallery File:Lower Upnor 3687.jpg|Former 'B' Magazine (1857) undergoing refurbishment. File:Lower Upnor 3683.jpg|Former Dry Guncotton Store (right, 1895) File:Lower Upnor 3673.jpg|Left to right: former No 3 Shell Store (1883), Mine Testing Room (1905) and Wet Guncotton Store (1895) File:Lower Upnor 3672.jpg|Left to right: main entrance, former filled Mine Store (1904), former filled Shell Store (1904)
The Military Railway The
British Army used this area to train a contingent from the 8th (Railway) Company Royal Engineers (RE). The British Army built a Standard Gauge Railway from
Chattenden to Upnor during October 1872 to April 1873. This was abandoned before the 16 December 1881 and a gauge line was built in 1885 One branch went to Lower Upnor, and the other to the Army Camp by Tower Hill. This line was used to supply armaments from
Chattenden, the Lodge Hill Ammunition Depot (LHAD) and the standard gauge at
Sharnal Street, to the warships of the
Royal Navy and the Upnor Magazine. The service closed on 19 May 1961. From August 1965 to February 1967, the
Royal Engineers converted the route from Lower Upnor to Chattenden into Upchat Road, including building the Royal Engineers Bridge over Four Elms Hill, where the Main Road and A228 go through the village of Chattenden.
The Royal Engineers Assault Boat training at Upper Upnor The
Royal Engineers still have a presence in Upper Upnor; the Riverine Operations Section (ROS) of the
Royal School of Military Engineering maintains classrooms, workshops and a hard in Upnor for training Royal Engineers Assault Boat Operators and Watermanship Safety Officers, who continue to operate craft on operations all over Planet Earth. The Riverine Operations Section (ROS) operates Mark 1 and Mark 3
Rigid Raiders, and
combat support boats, as well as teaching use of the
Mk 6 Assault Boat. The area is also used for other training purposes by the Royal School of Military Engineering including practice and test
bomb disposal tasks by the Defence
Explosive Ordnance Disposal School (DEODS), until its move to
Bicester. ==See also==