Fort Amherst Citadel

The Medway fortifications owe their existence to a humiliation. After the Dutch State Fleet raided the Medway between 12 and 14 June 1667, inflicting heavy damage on Chatham Dockyard, defences for the dockyard were planned from 1708, with land acquired under the Fortifications Acts of 1708 and 1709 and surveyed in April 1715 by the Duke of Marlborough. Between January and August 1755 a series of bastions went up, and the ditches and earthworks that followed during the Seven Years' War became known as the Chatham Lines. Fort Amherst itself was constructed between April and October 1756 at the southern end of the Brompton Lines; an infantry barracks for the garrison followed in June 1757.

During the American Revolutionary War the lines were strengthened, with two redoubts as their strong points — Amherst at the southern end, which became Fort Amherst, and Townsend to the north. In February 1779, workmen digging here uncovered the foundation of a Roman building, along with Roman brick, tile and coins including issues of the Empress Faustina and the Emperor Claudius; the finds were recorded by Rev. James Douglas, then serving as Lt Douglas with the Royal Engineers, who later published his research as Nenia Britannica. The Napoleonic Wars brought further enlargement, with new batteries and brick-revetted ditches to the plans of General Hugh Debbrieg. From September 1802 until June 1811 the tunnels were extended by prisoners, mostly convicts from St Mary's Island, who also created the vast underground stores and shelters, magazines, barracks, gun batteries and guardrooms that visitors walk through today. The last building works were finished in about March 1820.

That December, advances in artillery rendered the defences obsolete. The fortified area became a training ground, and its Victorian practice sieges drew thousands of spectators to Chatham, with VIPs seated on the barracks; one such siege appears in Dickens's Pickwick Papers. Fort Amherst served again in the Second World War as an Air Raid Warning Command Post for the ARP and the Royal Observer Corps. Scheduled as an ancient monument on 19 November 1959, it was tidied and restored by enthusiasts from August 1977 and bought from the Ministry of Defence in April 1980 by the Fort Amherst and Lines Trust.

The accounts gathered at Fort Amherst are few, and much alike. Visitors have described hearing a tapping or drumming sound in the tunnels, feeling a chill in the air, or sensing a light tap on the shoulder. In the version told here, the drumming then ceases as the headless figure of the Little Drummer Boy is said to walk past, before the sound resumes behind them.

Beyond that there is little to pass on, and we would rather say so than invent detail: no dated sightings, no names, no quoted testimony — only the shared account of sound, cold and touch underground, which the fort's ghost tours and over-night investigations continue to explore.

The Fort Amherst Heritage Trust, a registered charity on Dock Road in Chatham, opens the fort to visitors every day of the year, with daily tunnel tours at 11am and 2pm (times subject to change). Some of the cannons are fired on Sundays throughout the year and periodically during the school holidays. Parts of the site, including the Spur Battery and the Inner Lines — the Napoleonic defensive ditches — are reached by the Bicentenary Bridge built by a team of Royal Engineers in 2012, and are accessible only at special times and on guided visits.

For the ghost stories, the Trust has run a programme of evening ghost tours, typically on the first Friday of each month, along with over-night Ghost Watch paranormal investigations within the tunnels and Halloween tours that take guests through the dark rooms and passages. Organised public ghost hunts are also held at the fort by event companies. Check the current programme before you travel, and dress for cool underground passages whatever the weather above ground.