The History of the Fort

Post War
Coastal Defence was abandoned in 1956 and the Fort was temporarily used to house naval stores and degaussing equipment.  In 1961 it was purchased by Weymouth and Melcombe Regis Council who, at the time, were interested mainly in the military land available and were unable to advance any viable scheme for the use of the Fort. Much more decisive were the hippies and vandals who took over the buildings and who, by 1979, had done immense damage using most of the woodwork for firewood, selling the metal fittings for scrap, mutilating the stonework and using it as a canvas for graffiti . In 1979 the Weymouth Civic Society obtained a licence to restore the fort and to open it to the public. In this the Civic Society received extensive assistance both from the Council and from various government community programmes. Today, the fully restored fort is visited by some fifty or sixty thousand people a year who come to see the impressive architecture and masonry of the Royal Engineers, real and replica guns of the ages, views of the Dorset coastline, and over seventy rooms, many filled with displays of the history of the site, military life in the Fort and wartime life in Weymouth.