Grain Fort Walk the concrete MUDPATH FPV version

This is in FPV vision but there is a 360 version here:https://youtu.be/271zFymvFKE

Also the NIGHT TIME explore is well worth a look as we go into the bowels of the fort, areas which are not seen in this video... see here: https://youtu.be/LtR4s2yJNtI

Grain Tower is a mid-19th-century gun tower situated offshore just east of Grain, Kent, standing in the mouth of the River Medway. It was built along the same lines as the Martello towers that were constructed along the British and Irish coastlines in the early 19th century and is the last-built example of a gun tower of this type. It owed its existence to the need to protect the important dockyards at Sheerness and Chatham from a perceived French naval threat during a period of tension in the 1850s.

Rapid improvements to artillery technology in the mid-19th century meant that the tower was effectively obsolete as soon as it had been completed. A proposal to turn it into a casemated fort was dropped for being too expensive. By the end of the 19th century the tower had gained a new significance as a defence against raids by fast torpedo boats. It was used in both the First and Second World Wars, when its fabric was substantially altered to support new quick-firing guns. It was decommissioned in 1956 and remains derelict today. The tower has been privately owned since 2005 and was reportedly sold to a new owner in 2014 for £400,000.


The tower was initially armed with three 68-pdr. smoothbore guns which were mounted on traversing platforms on the roof and fired en barbette.[3] Although Martello-style towers were well able to resist the smoothbore guns of the early 19th century, the development of a new generation of much more powerful rifled muzzle loader (RML) guns made Grain Tower obsolete as soon as it had been completed.[3]

A fresh invasion scare at the end of the 1850s prompted the British government to appoint a Royal Commission on the Defence of the United Kingdom, which published a far-reaching report in 1860. It recommended that many existing forts should be upgraded or rebuilt entirely, and that new forts should be constructed to guard particularly strategic or vulnerable points along the coast. In all, around 70 forts and batteries were constructed around the English coast as a result of the Royal Commission's report.[6] The Commission recommended that Grain Tower should be turned into a fully casemated fort, which would be built around the existing structure. However, the cost of doing this was seen as excessive and the proposal was dropped as part of a cost-cutting exercise to reduce the overall cost of the fort-building programme.

In 1915, two 4.7-inch quick-firing (QF) guns were moved from Grain Wing Battery and installed on Grain Tower to counter the new threat of fast torpedo boats. This required the construction of a raised concrete and stone structure on the tower's roof within which the new guns were emplaced, and a shelter was created to provide room for detachments, stores and fire control. The body of the tower was also altered to upgrade the ammunition storage.[3]

The guns remained in place through the First World War, when the Grain Tower found an additional purpose as one end of a boom defence stretching across the Medway to Sheerness. The massive iron chain from the boom is still present, wrapped around the base of the tower. A fixed timber section of the boom stood between the tower and the shoreline. The tower was disarmed in 1929.


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Also present on this explore were
Exploring with Carl - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC746dmVW9KB5S81YEFU8xdA
Urban Lad Yorkshire - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGHnaJI6GG4RL6uZA4SxJeQ
Urban Legend - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0yPaLwsmyWv_YS_37ys8fA
Richie Wellock - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCc5Z1U4mgHjyQdfM9_CvPZw
Oxford Finest Explorer - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHq-goqlWlX_foWH2ytdJxw
Wee Mans World - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzcF8NcCVts9pN6f7WvBESw
Adzey156 - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1hcFvQrqs7Ua5oYossLk1w
katie ._.katiee explores - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAb0EwXAolUYXC3sOE-p9TA

#Abandonedplaces #Abandonedplacesuk #urbexuk #undergroundbunker #urbexexploration #urbex_europe_ #urbextreme #urbexphotography #DerelictBuildings #frozenintime #timecapsule
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