Remembering Liverpool Structures - Liverpool Fort

Following an agreement of the 3rd of December 1803, some seven months after the renewal of the war with Napoleonic France, a land battery was constructed to defend Liverpool, on the north shore of the Mersey just west of Clarence Dock. This battery was on land leased for one thousand years from the Corporation by the Board of Ordnance in 1817. Liverpool Fort was sited close to George's Dock and stood on the site from 1781 to 1820 when it was demolished to make way for finishing Princes Dock which opened the following year. It was equipped with 'eighteen and thirty-two pounders'. Also, Dr William Moss, writing in 'The Liverpool Guide' goes further to say that 'a strong guard of soldiers is always kept here. It is open for public recreation...[affording]...a very advantageous view down the river, from which point the rock point may be very distinctly observed'.

On two occasions in 1824 the Corporation of Liverpool addressed memorials to the master general of the ordnance, the Duke of Wellington, pressing for the return of their land, and the construction of new batteries to defend the city. Liverpool Dock Committee, of course at the expense of commerce and the public, had to buy the Old King's Fort, where the Princes Dock now is but required a new defence of the growing dock complex. Another was to requested to be built further to the North, and on the 14th of February 1845 proposals were to construct a new Battery well to the west of the existing docks, almost directly opposite the Fort at Perch Rock, on a spur of land between the Huskisson and Canada Docks. However 'defenceless' Liverpool may have been, no great haste was evident in the construction of the battery and there was constant disagreement over the chosen site and the finance of the new build. It was not until July 1853 that the Board of Ordnance accepted a tender for the construction of the work, and although the building of' sheds' at the new Huskisson Dock showed that the underlying problem of building a fortification for the defence of Liverpool remained, nothing now interfered with the work. The outbreak of the Crimean War in April 1854 served as a stimulus to the completion of the battery which, when finished, was to mount thirteen guns. It also led to the construction of a small work on Bootle Marshes, clearly a 'wartime emergency measure'. The new North Battery at Liverpool was finally completed during 1855, having first been mooted some thirty years before. 

The entrance to the Mersey harbour was now guarded by the North fort on the Liverpool side, and by the New Brighton fort on the Cheshire side. The North Fort, Liverpool, situated on the outer river wall between Huskissson and Canada Docks, had its guns trained towards the estuary mouth. Massively constructed of stone it was washed by the tide to a depth of 30 feet. The entrance was on the East side, with projecting wings and battlemented towers and the doorway was approached over a moat and drawbridge, and was arched; the centre of the fort was a square court-yard, on three sides of which were guard-houses, officers' rooms, stables, and other buildings; the bastions were semicircular sweeps of great thickness of wall, flanked by towers for heavy guns; the entrance to each tower was by a strong stone staircase, containing a casemate and artillery store; the aggregate outline of the fort seaward had the form of an arc of a circle; and the interior was always provided with ready-piled shells, and the hot-shot apparatus.'

 

The original North Battery was pulled down in 1841 and the remains of the Liverpool Fort have been discovered underneath the area which will eventually see the Hive building take its place at Princes Dock. 

see also:- http://www.thefootballvoice.com/2021/08/remembering-liverpool-structures-tower.html