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Fort Luton
Fort Luton was built between 1876 and 1892 south of Chatham, Medway, South East England.
It is one of the five late Victorian land front forts built to defend the overland approaches to Chatham. It is the smallest of the Chatham forts and was built near to the village of Luton.〔The Later Nineteenth-Century Land defences of Chatham – Post Medieval Archaeology, 10 (1976) pp 104–17: Victor T C Smith〕
==Construction and Purpose==
The fort was ordered under the auspices of the 1859/60 Royal Commission on the Defences of the United Kingdom, but it was deleted by Parliament in an attempt to save money and divert funds to the construction of the sea forts, and the Land Front Forts of Milford Haven, Plymouth, Cork and Portsmouth/ Isle of Wight Fortresses. The 1869 'Report on the Construction Condition and Costs of Fortification'〔Report on the Committee Appointed to Enquire into the Construction, Condition and Costs of the Fortifications Erected in 30, 31 Victoria Statutes Together with Minutes of Evidence – 1868〕 criticised the lack of landward protection for Chatham, yet it was not until 1872 that the Treasury relented and the land was purchased. Even so, it was not until 1876 that the order was given by the War Office, after approval by Parliament for construction to commence. The original design was by W.F. Jervois, but as by 1876 he had been promoted to major general he had no further part in its planning.〔PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, KEW, LONDON W078 2270, W0166, W033/48/A118〕 The work was surveyed and "pegged out" on the ground that same year. In 1877 work on the building started, using convict labour and the light railway to bring up the materials from Borstal Creek jetty.
The method adopted was to build all structures directly on to the land surface, and no form of preparation tunnelling was attempted. The work was slow due to lack of funds and the insistence of using convict labour, which meant that the labour force was constantly changing due to release or transfers to other prisons. In 1882 the work stopped for a re-think and once again restarted in 1886 when the decision was taken to delete from the plan one quarter of the design. This meant the loss of the Main Magazine (which was to have been in the western corner) and one quarter of this structure survived, much modified to become the above ground water tank. The well was also removed from the plan so the 4 inch water main had to be laid from Fort Horsted and the proposed under-bridge caponier was never even started. From 1886 to 1892, when the fort was finally completed, the ditch was dug and the spoil was used to cover the exposed buildings, some of which had been standing for over ten years, and to form the ramparts, the six very basic gun emplacements, two to each flank and a pair overlooking Luton Valley. Even so no armament is on record as ever having been issued to Fort Luton other than that brought in by units participating in the Annual Militia and Volunteer camps. The final act of engineering was the installation of the drawbridge in 1892 which is a rare type of rolling bridge and possibly the only one still left in the UK〔Journal of the Palmerston Forts Society: The Redan Issue No.35 Pages 29–31: A Bridge Too Far: The Forts Luton and Borstal Drawbridges by David Wood〕
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