Archeologists Investigate The British Fort Built To Defend Against Napoleon

What this episode is about

Archaeologists are investigating the Jean Cliff Redoubt, a fort built in Kent during the 1790s to defend Britain against a potential French invasion. The research focuses on the fort's design, its surrounding defenses, and its role as a pivotal military stronghold in response to the significant threat posed by the French forces at that time.

Key takeaways

• Kent's fortifications were more than stone—they were a response to existential dread across the Channel.
• The 170,000 French troops were the equivalent of 10% of their population—talk about a recruitment drive!
• Maps of military structures show more differences than a sibling rivalry—accuracy was clearly not a strong suit.
• Jean Cliff Redout was the ‘front line’ for a war, yet today, it’s just trees and a few murmurs.
• Building a fort to deter invaders? Classic British overreaction; a tea party would probably suffice today!

Who speaks in this episode?

• Martin (Host) · 14 min speaking
• Stu (Guest) · 12 min speaking
• Mick (Host) · 10 min speaking
• Helen (Guest) · 7 min speaking
• Phil (Guest) · 5 min speaking
• Bridge (Guest) · 5 min speaking

What is discussed, and when

1. 0:00 – 5:00: William Twist, Martell Towers
2. 5:00 – 10:00: George the Third
3. 20:00 – 25:00: 52nd Light Infantry, Sir John Moore, Green Jackets, Martell Towers
4. 25:00 – 30:00: Sir John Moore, Ezekiel Baker
5. 30:00 – 35:00: Sir John Moore, Sha Cliff Redout, Napoleonic
6. 35:00 – 40:00: Napoleonic
7. 40:00 – 45:00: Common Dance House, Napoleonic
8. 45:00 – 47:52: Napoleonic, Sir John Moore, William Twist

Notable quotes from "Archeologists Investigate The British Fort Built To Defend Against Napoleon"

• We got loads of maps and plans of this site. So that obviously makes me happy. Specifically, we've got two maps of 1794 done by William Twist, who's a military engineer who…

  about William Twist · at 2:52

• It's a time when George the Third, man farmer George is on the throne and we just lost the Americas.

  about George the Third · at 9:18

• Beginning of day two in our search for a military fort here at Sha Clifford Redout in Kent and all that's left on the ground is that massive earthwork.

  about Sha Cliff Redout · at 16:05

• General Sir John Moore arrived and set up the Green Jackets, the 95th Rifles Brigade.

  about Green Jackets · at 24:37

• In the early 1800s, this was a training camp under General Sir John Moore.

  about Sir John Moore · at 34:25

• The early 1800s. Anything without a frog, anything solid could have been made earlier. So, the bricks Phil's finding are from the late 1700s when this place was built.

  about Napoleonic · at 36:41

• The big house there with the stable block at the back. And of course, this would whole area is going to be turned into a garden to go with the common dance house. It's the most pre.

  about Common Dance House · at 41:21

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

• Sir John Moore — Person · Referenced military reformer / historical figure tied to the site · 5 mentions · first at 24:37
  Cited as the key early-1800s commander who used Shorncliffe as a training camp and helped shape modern British infantry tactics (95th Rifles/Green Jackets).
• William Twist — Person · Referenced military engineer / designer of the fort plan · 3 mentions · first at 2:55
  Identified as the military engineer who designed the site and produced key 1794 plans; discrepancies between his drawings drive the episode’s archaeological uncertainty about what was actually built.
• Ezekiel Baker — Person · Referenced weapons innovator (rifle designer) · 1 mention · first at 25:23
  Credited with developing the Baker rifle, used to explain the tactical shift to riflemen/skirmishers and longer-range accurate fire—central to the episode’s ‘modern army’ theme.
  Quickly obscure. But at this end, we've got riflemen and they're an innovation really which come in with this weapon developed by Ezekiel Baker. Yeah. And it has grooves cut in…
• George the Third — Person · Referenced monarch providing historical backdrop · 1 mention · first at 9:18
  Mentioned to situate the period (1790s Britain) politically and socially—industrial change, post-American loss, and fear of revolutionary contagion from France.

Concepts & topics

• Napoleonic — Concept · Core topic · 4 mentions · first at 30:19
  Central theme of the episode, discussing the Napoleonic era and its impact on military strategies and fortifications.
• Green Jackets — Concept · Historical military unit · 1 mention · first at 24:37
  Mentioned as part of the military innovations introduced by General Sir John Moore at Sha Cliff Redout.
• Martell Towers — Concept · Historical fortification · 2 mentions · first at 1:51
  Part of the defensive system built along the coast, mentioned in the context of upgrading defenses against the French.
  Along the coast, 74 Martell towers were built. A 28-m long military canal was also constructed.
• 52nd Light Infantry — Concept · Historical military unit · 2 mentions · first at 23:50
  Mentioned in the context of military presence at Sha Cliff Redout, specifically in 1803.
  This button was from the 52nd Oxfordshire regiment. They were based here in 1803.

Places & events

• Sha Cliff Redout — Place · Setting · 1 mention · first at 33:57
  Primary location discussed in the episode, a historical fort in Kent, England, built in response to the French threat of invasion in the 1790s.
• Common Dance House — Place · Historical building · 2 mentions · first at 41:21
  A significant building within the Sha Cliff Redout site, mentioned in the context of the site's historical evolution.

Full transcript with timestamps

0:10 That's the southeast corner of England, the county of Kent. And way over there in the distance is France. And in 1793, the French declared war on us. They started amassing a huge army way over there in Baloy. And they ended up with 170,000 men. And what was our response? We began building a big fort right over there called Jean Cliff Redout. And if the French had invaded, that would have been our front line. So what kind of fort was it? What was it like inside? And with that, could we have seen off the French? We've got just three days.

1:05 Heat. Heat. This southeast corner has always been vulnerable to attack. It's an easy target for invaders from Europe. In the 1790s, the threat from France was very real. They had 170,000 men. We needed to counter that. So, we threw up a whole system of defenses. A battery wall, a military canal, lots of Martell towers. The redout itself was just one part of this. It was built in the 1790s as a big square earth bank with a large ditch on the outside, but the bank on the northern side was removed in the 1950s and it's now open ground.

2:12 The southern part is covered in trees. And in here, the banks are still standing. When it was built, this was a major line of defense.

2:27 Martin, redout is one of those oldfashioned words that, you know, is vaguely military, but what exactly is it? Simply it's a fort but to be more specific it's it's a strong point of readout and it it's the pivot for defenses and it's the place where you go and haul up if your defenses get pierced and if things start to go wrong for you.

2:47 Stu, you look pretty happy with all that paper. Yeah, look at this maps. We got maps. So we got loads of maps and plans of this site. So that that obviously makes me happy. Specifically, we've got two maps of 1794 done by William Twist, who's a military engineer who designed this site, and it shows ramparts and ditches and structures, but there there are two of the same date. There are differences between them. For instance, if you look at this one, it's got two circular structures, but this colored one has these structures in the corner here, which this doesn't have. So, although we've got plans, there's obviously some uncertainties as to to what's going on here.

3:22 So, how do we start, Mick? I mean, it just looks like wild scrub land now, doesn't it?

3:26 Yeah, but we can do geohysics across that area, although the the grass is pretty rank. But more of a problem is the woods over here, which covers half the site. So, if we want to know about these buildings, I think we've got to send Stuart in on the end of a piece of screen and let him have a ferry round and see what whether he can locate any of these. So, it's down to him, not gears.

3:44 Both. One problem with this place is all the maps. They're all different. The two architects drawings done by Twist in 1794 differ from each other. The first map from the 1830s is different again. We're hoping to work out from the evidence on the ground what buildings were actually put up here in the 1790s and how the banks were built. The northern banks have gone and this is now all open ground. So geohysics should be able to look here for the ditch on the outside of where the bank had been. But in here where the trees are is where most of the buildings would have been.

4:30 This is more difficult. Stuart's going to have his work cut out to make any sense of things in here. Taken together, the two twist drawings do show some other features that we think we can get at just here. It's pretty easy to show snow on the telly and rain, but cold's much harder. You're just going to have to take our word for it. It's freezing, isn't it?

4:56 Absolutely. So, what are we looking for up here? Well, we're standing in the southwest corner. Um, you can see that that this is the rampart on the plan. And that's the rampart going along there. And then the other bit coming up here and we're just looking at all these amazing little structures here.

5:11 What do you think that might be? It looks like a magazine. you the stores for the ammunition, the gunpowder for for possibly a cannon because where we're standing looks the right sort of place to position a couple of cannons.

5:20 So, where do you think that is on the ground? It's appears to be thrown forward of the rampart. And I suspect that then means it's going to be buried.

5:28 It's right the other side of the ditch. So, it's going to be a really long way down from where we are. And and so this what that looks like is actually a tunnel. And I think if you come come around here, see how well preserved this is. That looks like there could easily be an entrance to the tunnel here. All we'd have to do is cut it back and it should be there ready and waiting for us.

5:45 So, should we get the people in to sort that out? Yeah, definitely. In this southwest corner, we've got three targets. This circle may have been a position for a cannon. There may have been a magazine, an ammunition store here on the outside of the bank. It would have been outside just in case it blew up. And they must have had a tunnel to get to the magazine. So we open a trench to see if there's an entrance way on top of the bank. Geopys can get radar in to see if there was a cannon position here. This part of the bank's very wide. Other parts are much narrower. There is a logic to these banks. They're not just big lumps of earth thrown up in a heap. Stuart explains how they work to Helen.

6:38 So, we're on this this platform which runs around the inside of the earth. Then you see this other little slope here.

6:44 Yeah. If I if I just walk up it, that bit there. Then there's another level area.

6:49 Oh, it's hard to see. Is it It's presumably it's easier to feel as you walk. Yeah. You see you're going up now and then you're on to an

6:55 Oh, and there it levels off. Yeah. What you're on now is the fire step. It's about this big.

6:59 That's the next white bit on this plan. So, and then there's a bank beyond and then it drops off really massively. So the idea that the musketeers who might defend this, if musketeers is the right technical term,

7:11 they can load down here in safety, uh, they can go all the way around the fort on this platform. They can run from one bit to the other.

7:18 Can go up onto the fire step. Uhhuh. Bang, bang, bang, bang. Drop back down. You can reload in safety if you need to. And if you need to move around the fort, you know, you can sort of

7:26 run off down the platform. And the whole idea is to be able to get round the defense, fire over, drop back down. Perfectly well protected here. Nobody can shoot over this. So, it's a great defensive system and actually very simple.

7:38 Yeah, you look very heroic. Thank you. Down the slope where Matt's looking for some sort of entrance way to a tunnel. The early signs are good.

7:50 See, we've got another bit there. Yeah. And a big one there. And a little bit seems to be coming over that way.

7:55 Yeah. And if you actually I mean I have faith in everything. Almost almost almost

8:02 coming up on Yeah, it could be a line there. Could be the beginnings of an entrance or something, couldn't it?

8:06 Possibly. If you move over just a little. Well, let's see. My faith isn't that strong.

8:10 Yeah. Okay. Back out in the open area where Gia fizzing. It's a big space and it'll take a while. This is the part that's now open space. The banks are cut off in two places. here and here. [snorts] In this spot, there's a ready-made cross-section. All we have to do is clean it up and cut it back, and it could give us an idea of how it was actually built. We start to clear it. We've been told by the local wildlife group that removing some trees in here would actually be a help in encouraging wildlife to return. Back in the 1790s though, what was actually happening here and in Europe?

9:06 I think it's a period of great change. You know, it's it's the period of in in the middle of the industrial revolution for for a start.

9:12 Yeah, there's enormous changes in the countryside with enclosure and new crops, new farms, all the rest of it.

9:18 It's a time when George the Third, you know, man farmer George is on the throne

9:22 and we just lost the Americas. And we just lost the Americas. There's revolution going on in France and all over Europe. You know, royal families and and governments are worried that this idea of revolution is going to spread.

9:34 Oh, you can understand the fear. Over in France, they just done the most dreadful thing of killing their own monarch.

9:41 Well, absolutely. I I don't have a problem with that. But I mean, the the whole idea of of democracies growing at the time, you know, you can see why royal houses in Europe would have been worried

9:53 because of many of these fears. The 1790s also saw huge changes in the army. This was the time when the modern army as we currently know it began to form and Sha Cliffe was right at the forefront of that. I gather at this time though there was a professional army which I didn't realize. I thought everybody was just sort of recruited from local villages when they needed them.

10:16 The army is very small. Um that means it's quite cheap because you don't need vast numbers of soldiers because our main line of defense of course is the navy. So what they then do then is they increase the amount of taxation which means they can have a bigger navy which everybody wants and a bigger army which people are not so certain about. But once there's a real threat of the French landing

10:35 everyone wants to be a soldier they go from being the scum of the earth as Wellington calls them to being actually people you might like to have around. So the social status of soldiers goes up and you get the mention in people like Jane Austin how glamorous it is to have soldiers around. There's even the idea of this thing called um scarlet fever which is the ladies get when the soldiers arrive.

11:02 Rise eyes right in the northern part of the site the open area. John has now geofizzed the edges. He was looking for the ditch on the outside of the bank.

11:18 Look, these are the magnetic results. The red is the really strong responses. We've got this clear band curving round. I'm sure that's corresponding to the bank and ditch of the defenses. Obviously, they're flattened out now, but they're still surviving in the magnetics.

11:33 I mean, there's some real hot spots in here. How big are these? Well, look, that that's a sort of 5 m across there.

11:38 Oh, right. Bigger is that? That sounds like a big trench bit. What sort of size ditch are we talking about for this?

11:44 It's a proper fortification. It's a big ditch. It's not not a decorative feature. 3 or 4 meters.

11:49 See, I told you we need a big trench. M. Look, to get that full depth, we're going to have to go what about three bucket widths wide, I reckon. Then we can sort of step it in and then maybe one slot right through the middle. Cuz really, we've got to get right to the bottom. There's no point in doing half a job.

12:07 Phil's big trench is here. He's hoping to find a large ditch. The trench looking at the makeup of the bank is here. Together, these two trenches should tell us a lot about how this place was built. In the southwest corner, digging slow. We're still looking for the tunnel entrance, but we've hit natural. It doesn't look good. On top of the bank, we're looking for a cannon position marked by a circle on the plan, but it's slow work by hand. And Helen's trying to work out where to put a trench in her search for the magazine.

12:47 It's going straight. It's going up this rise here. All morning, Stuart's been wandering in the woods. He's trying to find a way of locating these buildings inside the fort to see if they were built. Using geometry, he's trying to tie the building in the center down. He needs help though as he can only do it if he has two corners

13:10 and there's enough geometry in the layout of the fort to be able to work out where the center is and it should be in the center of that cross- shaped building. So using kind of technology, I think I think we can work out where that is. But I need a bit of help from you guys.

13:25 Chain, right? Okay, Henry. Okay. Yeah. Can you go to the far back of the entrance there for us, Ben? Yeah, that's better. You're right in the center there.

13:39 Can you see that? It's not as simple as it looks. How straight is that? It's getting messy now. A way to go yet, Henry. How far have we gone?

14:04 About halfway. It's been bitterly cold all day. Reluctantly, we take refuge. There you go, Tony.

14:14 Oh, truth. That's a first, isn't it? Have a tight Yorkshire or anything? You're a Yorkman, are you?

14:20 Oh, I didn't know that. All right. So, where have we got to then? Interesting question. Rayan [snorts] scaled this plan against the the existing maps and we got a really good correlation between what we know was there and what's on on this plan and what it's thrown up is quite interesting. Helen's already put or marked out a trench just down here, haven't you?

14:40 Yeah, it was a really good lump and bump. But it falls sort of in no man's land according to the the scale plan. It's somewhere about there.

14:47 That's completely in the wrong place. If we want to hit the corner of that magazine there, then we're going to have to measure out 46 m from the base of that rampart

14:55 to that corner. So, a lot further out than we are now, isn't it? Yeah. We can go further out out there than than you've got that marked out, can't we?

15:03 Yeah. But it's miles down the slope. There's no flat area. I wouldn't What we should do is measure 46 m out tomorrow and see where where it But at least there's some grout to play with. No road or compound or anything like that. Talking about planned and built also raises the question of what's happening in the interior and and the arrangement of buildings out there. Any thoughts on that?

15:22 Oh, this this is really good because this is where on the inside we've got half the half the area is full of trees on this side and then the other is open. But this central building that's shown this map that area is under the trees and I've marked out exactly where the center of that building is. So if we can locate something in that area, then it'll help us radiate out and identify these other buildings. So this is really promising in there. So it's been a really satisfying day. After 156 programs, we've had Stuart's first round.

15:53 And tomorrow we're going to get right down into the middle of the redout. Cheers.

16:00 Your round next. You might have to wait 14 years for it, though. Beginning of day two in our search for a military fort here at Sha Clifford Redout in Kent and all that's left on the ground is that massive earthwork. But yesterday Helen was looking for the underground explosive store, the magazine, which is this thing here. And she reckoned that it would be round about here somewhere. But since then, Stuart's been doing some pondering and some measuring, and he reckons that it would have been way down there at the bottom of that bank, in which case this whole structure would have been absolutely huge.

16:40 In fact, it's 46 m from the base of the bank to the edge of where we think the magazine might have been. It would have been built underground in case the explosives inside blew up. So before digging the trench, we start to clear the brush away. In this area on top of the bank, we opened a trench to see if we could find a gun platform, but there's no evidence of anything up here yet. Just here, we're looking for an entrance way to a tunnel into the magazine. But this too has thrown up nothing. It's all natural, no archaeology.

17:25 So, we close this trench down. And another trench was put in over here on some geopizz. This one was dug by Phil and his mates. Although quite honestly, given that he started it yesterday afternoon, he doesn't seem to have done very well. Phil, you call that a trench? Yes, I do actually.

17:51 But you started when now before tea yesterday, wasn't it? Yeah, but we had to back fill it overnight.

17:57 Why? Well, because the the the sides are just so dangerous. Look, you can see the way that side is collapsing.

18:03 Why don't you just shore it up? Look, look. The easiest thing is is just to make the thing so much bigger. What we're actually looking at is is literally the bank that's been pushed down into the ditch. It's had no time to stabilize at all.

18:16 We really going to learn anything from that? Yeah, because we want to see the profile of the ditch on the bank that was there and you know we've got to find it. We got to find the bottom and the sides and we can't see it at the moment at all. You see over there we've got the got the main ram part but what we've not got is the ditch. If we can put the ramp part that's over there with the ditch over here. I tell you what that is going to look seriously impressive defenses.

18:39 I mean all they've done is push this bank into this ditch. The two is all mixed up together. You know, we don't know what the original ditch looked like. Do we at all?

18:48 Okay. Phil, the man who takes more pride in his trenches than all the rest of the archaeologists on this site altogether. Look at it. We're hoping to build a profile for the bank and ditch on the edges of this fort. Phil's digging the ditch here. Over here, Jenny's looking at a section of the bank, sometimes called the rampart. And it's not as straightforward as it seems.

19:18 That's looking very impressive, Jen. Yeah, it's pretty good, isn't it? Is it making any sense?

19:23 I think so. Yeah, we've basically got the this sort of very yellow sandstone um layer in the bottom, which is the bottom of the ramp part, I think, [clears throat] and then with sort of other layers of tipping sort of on top of it. So, I don't Does that look the same as around the other side? It isn't quite what I expected. I expected to see quite a lot of this this green stone lumps. I mean, you've got some, but they're quite small, aren't they?

19:48 Yeah, very small. But then it's browner above it, isn't it? Like as if that's got more sort of soil or stuff in it.

19:54 Yeah, that's it. And I assume if it's come out of the ditch and they're just dumping it, then you would expect it to come out in layers, wouldn't you?

20:00 Yeah. And you'd expect it the other way around, wouldn't you? Yes. They taking this the soily stuff off the top and getting down to the green sand.

20:11 Yeah. And they were just dumping it as a ramp part. You'd expect it the other way around, wouldn't you?

20:16 Yeah. So, that isn't I'm going to have to go away and think about that and and and and put some put some food into the brain and see what it comes up with.

20:26 Or 10,000 volts might be better. I'll see you later. See you later. Mick can't make sense of this. If you dig out a ditch and build a bank, the stuff in the top of the hole should form the bottom of the bank, it should come out like this. This one hasn't. Over in the southwest corner, in their hunt for the magazine, which would have been built underground, Matt and Helen are also experiencing something strange. As archaeologists, they're now in unknown territory.

21:03 It looks like natural there, isn't it? But I mean, if it's been tunnneled through underneath,

21:08 bored. Bored. Yeah. Then we um we going through natural now and then we could hit the tunnel. So, we're in a strange archeological situation where we're going through the natural to find some archaeology underneath there.

21:18 I know. It's quite weird, isn't it? I think it's a first for me. But we're also now concentrating on the buildings in the center of the fort. Stuart thinks he has this cross-shaped building. So, Bridge starts to investigate. If she finds this building, we may be able to target others based on where the center is. We've been talking about this place as the great redout, the fort, the ultimate protection against invasion by 170,000 Frenchmen from across the water. But honestly, when I look at that little hill, I have to tell you, when I was eight, I used to cycle down slopes more steep than that

22:06 with me trainers. It's not some sort of sand castle on the beach. this. I mean, it's not got all the whistles and bells of a fort like Chattam or somewhere, but it's really well built.

22:16 Yeah, it may be well built, but it's in wincy, isn't it? What I think you should do is go and get Johnny Frog's view. Go down the bottom of that hill. Go on.

22:27 Sort of clever about going down there on your bike now as well. No, this is slightly steeper than I thought.

22:33 Yeah. I wish I got me training wheels on this thing. You know people talk about archaeology making statements in the landscape. The statement this place is making is come and have a go if you think you're hard enough.

22:44 Noab I will return to France. Too sweet. Point taken. And your emperor as well. Yeah.

22:54 On top of the bank. We've got good news. We're finding military material. Well, I'm hoping that you're going to tell me that that's a cannonball.

23:02 I think I probably am. It's an iron ball. It's It's a bit mangled. This obviously is not from a 24 pounder which are the size of a football. This is from a much smaller piece or even a a wall gun on a tripod that would be run around to points of danger and used to fire down at approaching enemy troops. It

23:18 still looks quite lethal though. Ideally, you make them bounce off the ground and they go up through a column of troops starting at knee height and coming off the top at a head height.

23:26 It would make a real mess of you. Yeah. I'm still quite happy though. I I I am I am overjoyed.

23:32 And there's more. down by Helen. The metal detectorrists have come up with something.

23:39 Gavin's just found it on the surface. It's got a a broken loop on the back, so clearly it's a button. Isn't it in amazing condition?

23:45 It's lovely, isn't it? Yeah. 52 in the middle. And Oxfordshire round the bottom.

23:50 52nd Light Infantry or the Oxford Light Infantry. Um, and they're here in 1803.

23:56 That's brilliant. It's great, isn't it? And the other really nice thing is it's silvered.

24:00 Yeah, it's very shiny. Yeah. So, that's an officer's button. Cool. He would have had to paid for that and his his rather better uniform with all his own money.

24:09 This button was from the 52nd Oxfordshire regiment. They were based here in 1803. By that time, Shacliffe was undergoing massive change. The French still hadn't attacked and we were upgrading our defenses. Along the coast, 74 Martell towers were built. A 28-m long military canal was also constructed. Shaun Clifford Redout's purpose had changed. General Sir John Moore arrived and set up the Green Jackets, the 95th Rifles Brigade. He brought about a major change in thinking in how the army fought. While Moore was here, this place was a wash with soldiers learning new skills.

24:56 And the key was the introduction OF THE RIFLE. THE COVER. RELOAD. THAT'S QUITE IMPRESSIVE.

25:04 It certainly was. One thing I noticed straight away, of course, was that they've got two different sorts of uniforms on. Why is that?

25:10 Well, we've got line infantry who wear the red uniform in the same way as the French army would wear blue to ensure that we can distinguish each other in battle because the smoke would very quickly obscure. But at this end, we've got riflemen and they're an innovation really which come in with this weapon

25:26 developed by Ezekiel Baker. Yeah. And it has grooves cut in the barrel. They grip the ball unlike the common musket which is smooth. This means that the ball goes further and a soldier can actually hit a target at a longer range about 280 yards. And all armies had these clouds of skirmishes. Men who went ahead of the line. We call them rifles and they wear green because their job isn't to form a solid line that we see there. Yes. But just like we've got there, they skirmish ahead of the army and with a longer range picking

25:59 enemy officers, enemy standard bearers, doing a lot of damage as they advance, allowing them the line to form up and then be able to then deliver close range volley firing. So, it's a combination of tactics.

26:14 Can I have a go? I don't see why not. Is this safe? It is. Yeah. That's not It's It's loaded, but not.

26:20 Is it like like this? No, it's going to be in your other shoulder. There's no such thing as a left-handed musket, I'm afraid. It's going to be in there.

26:26 All right. And then going to put it in nice and tight and when you're ready, you just bring it back to full

26:32 Look down the barrel. Remember, look, aim at your target. One, two, three, five.

26:37 There we are. I think I got a friend here, sir. Certainly did. This change in tactics was to lead to Sir John Moore being thought of as the father of the modern British army. Because even today, the army still uses crack soldiers, skilled riflemen working ahead of other troops in the field. In the center of the woods, Bridge is looking for the cross-shaped building on the plan. She's now hit a white surface, which looks encouraging, but it's still too early to say what it might be. Out here, though, where Phil's looking for the ditch that would have surrounded the whole site, he thinks he's found it.

27:23 And it's deep. 5 and 1/2 mters to there. So, allowing I mean, that isn't far off. That's got to be 5 m deep. But that's a hell of a ditch.

27:36 Hell of a ditch. You imagine the ramp part up there as well from some up there right up there. It's a hell of a vertical height.

27:44 You don't want to have to charge up that, do you? Taking Phil's ditch and Jenny's bank. We can now see how big the defenses were here.

27:56 Stretching 5 m high and 5 m deep. So 10 m from the bottom of the ditch to the top of the bank. That's 30 ft in old money. There's no way I'd ride my bike down that. We've applied 10,000 volts to Mick's brain and he now seems to have a better idea as to how this structure was actually built.

28:22 I don't know if you realize quite how daft you've been looking all day, but you've been wandering around these ramparts, scratching your head, looking quite grouchy. What's been going on?

28:30 Well, I I felt very confused by, you know, the ideas I had yesterday seem perfectly all right and then today I've had to revise them.

28:37 So, what do you think it is now? Jen's trench is the is the clue to this really. What they did was they probably stripped the turf off the whole area and stacked it to one side and then they were going to get the material out of a ditch,

28:49 but of course the top material is the soil and the, you know, earth and humic material. They must have stacked that on one side because what they're actually after is the green sand and the green sand blocks in the bottom because that forms the core of the ramp part. They put that in first and then they put the the soil that they got off the top on top of that to sort of, you know, reinforce it. They probably put wicker work and stuff down as well. Uh and they might have actually put the turfs in the edge to retain it. And then what Jen's section showed us that there's actually several layers of that. So they put a layer of sand in, layer of turf, and they keep building it up like that. It isn't just a dump of of sand and a dump of soil and so on. It's actually very carefully put together.

29:38 And they must have been really quite clever how they did it and they must have thought it out or they knew that this was the properties of the stuff in order to get those layers and consolidate it. So it's actually quite an impressive structure. In the middle of this structure, Bridge is still searching for this cross-shaped building, and it's looking hopeful. Now,

29:59 this very dark material here, we've got lots of burnt papers. Date to about 1945, World War II.

30:05 And then we've got this earlier phase here, which is a very, very compact. You can hear it there. Like concrete.

30:11 It really is. It's a proper proper floor with bits of brick in it. That's earlier than 1945. Moment we're thinking sort of late 1800s. And then beneath that, we've got what look like Napoleonic bricks

30:22 that are making up another construction phase, but we just don't know what that is at the moment.

30:27 So, we don't know if that's a wall or anything yet. We don't I mean, we can see it extending here. So, it seems to be doing a bit of a dog leg in that direction. And we've got the earliest phase here um down and it's this rammed chalk with gravels.

30:41 So, this would be a foundation for something above. They've they've made a real solid foundation for it.

30:47 Yeah. And if you can see it going straight up the trench there. It looks like we've possibly got natural on this side and we've got the chalk on this phase of that building.

30:55 So this is the foundations of that cross- shaped building on the plan there. Well, that's what we're hoping. Yeah.

30:59 Great. This is the first structure we've come across on the whole site. Helen's now spent two days looking for the magazine, the ammunition store on the outside of the fort, but she can't find it. There's no evidence it was ever built. Well, we've gone past the line, haven't we? Just about here.

31:19 Yeah. Yeah. Further back. And there's just nothing, is there? Given John Moore's presence here as someone who specialized in training men and the presence of the 95th rifles, specialist infantrymen. We're beginning to wonder, was any of this other stuff, the heavy fortifications, actually ever built? I feel that you've been taken for mugs a bit that you've been working off this plan as though it's a reality, but actually it's much more like an architecture. Oh, no, no, no, no. Let me finish. It's much more like an architect's drawings uh before the man from the council comes in and says, "Oh, no, you can't do that. You can't do that." And you've been taking it literally. This is a a a kind of a concept plan as it were.

32:05 Agreeing with me, basically. Well, it's it's it's a half and halfway stage. They were planning to put magazines in the corners. It doesn't look as if they've done that. And interestingly, can you see these construction lines here? That looks like a big arrow head. There's another one down here and another one up here. And these triangles, these are the sort of shapes you get if you're planning a big star fort with big angle bastions. The sort of forks you should have at this period. And it looks as if what Twist was doing was using a plan to the side and using it to plan out a concept for a much bigger and grander fort with these big angle bastions and and all the rest of it, but there's no evidence at all that he did any of these outworks at all.

32:47 Now, that's interesting because perhaps we're seeing archeological traces of General Ma. He's not a fortification soldier. He's an open warfare meeting the French, hitting them hard, defeating them in the field soldier. He doesn't need all the great list of things, raalins, riddans that a fought of the period would could and would have had otherwise.

33:09 All right, you arrowheaded bastion. What do you reckon that we've actually got on the ground that's in that map?

33:15 Well, we've got earthworks of some of these. We can see that one, for example, and we've got uh in in Bridget's excavation, we've got what looks like a corner part of this. And you know, we're going to we're going to dig more of those areas tomorrow. We'll get more of that. Fines have been pretty good, haven't they?

33:31 Yeah. At least we've got a a lot of knowledge about the presence of the army from the fines. We've got buttons, we've got clasps, we've got bullets, we've got all sorts of things. So, we know there are people here using it doing all the kind of army type thing, you know.

33:43 Well, tomorrow, let's hope we can finally find out what of this actually was in the ground and wasn't just a dream. And also, wouldn't it be great if we could find something to do with the 95th?

33:52 Oh, wouldn't it just? Oh, yes. It's the beginning of day three in our search for the earliest structures of Sha Cliff Redout in Kent. For the last two days, we've been concentrating on the edges of the site. We can now say how the banks were made and how big the ditch was. But there's no sign of a tunnel entrance, no sign of cannon positions, and no sign where Helen was of a magazine. Advance homes.

34:25 In the early 1800s, this was a training camp under General Sir John Moore. We no longer believe these bits, the big fortification parts, were actually built. There's no evidence on the ground for any of them, but we do think that the buildings in here were built. And we think we've got this one. This cross-shaped building in the center here in Bridg's trench. Bridge. Now joined by Phil, is looking for dating evidence for it. Having found this one, Stuart's now hunting for others based on where the central one lies.

35:04 Oh, excuse me. Excuse me. Hi, technology coming through. Actually, Martin, give us a hand. He is using the latest technology. A small eyepiece and the back of a packet by the look of things, right? That looks like it's going to work then. Stuart's calculations put him here on this building. And he also thinks he's got this one now too. The first trench looks promising. There's a wall here. It looks like Stuart really does know what he's doing. There he is.

35:43 There we go. John, it's that edge, that black edge there, Ian. And you're only what about I reckon you're about that far off it.

35:53 Back in the trench in the center, Phil and Bridge are having trouble working things out. But the bricks they're finding are the key.

36:02 See, that is a handmade brick. Look, it's smoothed on. more. So, in fact, it's reused because look, that's the earlier mortar, that yellowy stuff. And then this is this is where it's been built in with a later cement mortar.

36:19 And very noticeably, there's no frog in it. It's not it's not a frog. This one down here where it's

36:26 Well, look, here here's a here's a real frog brick. Oh, yeah. See, that's a really late one. It's even got the name on it. Look,

36:36 this brick is frogged. It's got this dip in the side. This practice started in the early 1800s. Anything without a frog, anything solid could have been made earlier. So, the bricks Phil's finding are from the late 1700s when this place was built. One problem we have is that the maps show different buildings on this site across the last 200 years. Stuart's going through them trying to work out what was happening with them. Will we ever get down to the 1790s stuff?

37:11 The upside of this kind of temperature is that everyone's working really hard because it's the only way it can stay warm. Rackshar, how we getting on here?

37:19 Well, doing great, Guns here. Um, currently have two phases of building. There's a 1930s wall coming through and we also have um walls of an earlier stable which should be mid-9th century. We haven't quite yet found Twist's earlier building, but those cobbles are looking quite promising.

37:37 Excellent. So, we might have Twist in there after all. Helen, you've got a trench here, haven't you?

37:43 Yep. And it's absolutely full of demolished building, but it's all 20th century at the moment. And I I don't know where this earlier building is supposed to be in the trees. Not here yet. But you think you may have a bit of twist here.

37:55 Hoping still. Right. Well, that's not the trench where we're hoping that we'll get the the big discovery. That's down here. Jess, can I come in your trench?

38:06 Oh, nearly broke my neck then. Right, Phil? Come over here. Hang on it. Now, I know that at some time where are you? I know at some time we had lots of different layers of occupation, didn't we? Have we sorted those out yet?

38:19 We're getting there. We really are getting there. I mean, we still think this could be Napoleonic. These these surfaces, we're still not 100% certain, but we could well be looking at Napoleonic levels here. What we're certainly looking at here is we've finally got solid brick walls. And we here would have been one wall that's been robbed out. But here and over here, we've actually got walls which are part of the structure.

38:46 And but are you sure that it's late 18th, early 19th century? Yes. Because you see these here, these bricks here have got a frog in them. They're not a well-developed frog. You see that slight dishing in the top of the brick.

38:58 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. These are some of the first bricks that would have had frogs in them. And over there, we could well be into the main range.

39:05 That's a heck of a mess up there, isn't it? Yeah, I know. We're sorting that out.

39:08 See you later. One big positive here is the finds. We found lots of military material, buttons, bullets, even a program for a boxing match in World War II. Most of this though was found on the edges of the site. There's very little from the inside. In Phil's trench, we're still investigating this floor. We think it's from the 1790s, and so far it's the only part of the site that we think may be from the original twist plan. We're still looking for definitive evidence of that. It's difficult though with all the different layers coming through.

39:49 You think that's concrete in it? No, I don't think so. That's stone. No, this is this local stone. We've been seeing it all around the place.

40:00 It's got concrete. Do you think so? Hey, you think so? Well, look, it's got look little stones in it. Little stones. Look. And look, look, look. There's a there's even a layer. Look, there's a little skim on the outside of it.

40:16 You do get banding though in stone, don't you? Can't believe that. That is Look at that. It's got to be That's Look at these inclusions,

40:25 right? That is It's got these inclusions. That's concrete. Well, that's disappointing, Phil.

40:30 Well, I know it's disappointing, but it doesn't change the fact. It could actually be an old wall with a concrete face on it. Still could be quite old. You're convinced now then, are you?

40:41 Oh, yeah, I am now. Yeah. Let's get on and take the rest of this wall out. Go on.

40:50 The walls we're coming across here where Rakshar is and here where Phil is are all later than we'd hoped. They all date from the middle of the 19th century. We're still desperate for earlier material,

41:05 but it's day three and Stuart has been piecing things together. Looking at the the maps of the site,

41:12 yeah, we have a large house in there called Redout House. This was built sometime after 1844,

41:19 but this map shows it really clearly. The big house there with the stable block at the back. And of course, this would whole area is going to be turned into a garden to go with the the common dance house. It's the most pre prestigious building on the site there. And there's actually a drawing of it done. There it is. You can see like a twotory building. But what

41:39 you've got going with this house is obviously gardens around it. Give it privacy, shelter from the rest of the camp. If you come along here, what they're doing, big house is over there, right?

41:48 Yeah. And they're using the old ramp part as a a terrace walk all go all the way around it.

41:54 It's funny when I came here first, you know, and looked across it, I thought it looked like one of these overgrown Victorian romantic gardens, which of course is what it is, isn't it?

42:03 That's right. Yeah. But also what they did here, this is the best bit really. What they've done is just adapted what's already here. Yeah.

42:10 But interestingly, the ramp part that goes that way, that's the one facing the sea. That's what they've done is lowered it and reduced the width of the the outer ramp part so they can look out over the sea. That's a two-story building.

42:22 Nice view from the house. The common down from his bedroom could open the curtains, look over the garden and see the sea. Rather nice, isn't it?

42:28 Very good. Very good. These walls all date from the time of the big house built by the camp commander in the 1840s. Their layout matches the layout of the stable block. And Phil's now hit something very deep to the rear of his trench. It turns out to be a cellar again from the big house. I find it so frustrating. We've been freezing ourselves all day trying to get to grips with this military site and we come down on a posh house complete with lovely little rectangular rooms.

43:06 Well, this is a military building. It just happens to be the house of the camp commander. his chief honcho in 1844. They've got rid of all the the barracks and the guard rooms swept out the internal area of this redout and this becomes a big garden with a big fancy house in it. These are the sellers of the main wing of the house and that's the back of it going that way. It's a smart place. They even reduce the height of the ramp part. So you can see out to sea from from his upper balcony and they put a ballastrade around the top to sweep away what was there before to put this house in. So how come we've got so much evidence of that period whereas the period that we came here to look at has virtually completely disappeared.

43:49 Well I I think what you found from the maps really shows it, doesn't it? That that you know the whole lot is cleared out, planed off and then they start again. And they've done that on probably three occasions on this site. And when we're learning this about the sort of 18th, 19th, 20th centuries, you know, that they they there are some people with enough power and money and everything to get a a complete landscape altered.

44:12 I thought it was the kings and queens and aristocrats who did that though. Well, yeah, but the military is another aspect, isn't it? It's part of the arm of government. It's got the labor to do it. And it it's certainly got the labor because you know if you don't employ the soldiers to do you get them to whitewash the coal don't you got to keep them occupied.

44:28 So they might as well do a bit of land clearance and make a posh house. Absolutely.

44:33 At least we've got the early floor. Or do we? It wouldn't be time without a last minute hitch on day three. For the last day and a half we've been staring at this white floor assuming that it was Napoleonic. But now a crisis seems to have hit and Phil's staring down at that little hole.

44:51 There's no crisis at all. This gravel here is the actual foundation of the common dance house. Now if you look, this white material actually sits on top of the gravel of the foundations of the common dance house. So this white material has got to be later than the foundations of the common dance house. It cannot be Napoleonic. Well, that might not be much of a crisis to you, but for me, it means that every bit of evidence that we've got for the early phase of this place has completely disappeared.

45:22 Oh, no, no, no. We knew it had a wrecking. Yeah, but we didn't know it was built and what it looked. We know the story. We

45:31 see it from the hotel window as it looks now. We wanted to see what survived the Twister's time. We've got Twister's plan. We've shown that the ramp parts were built exactly as they're shown here. We've shown what wasn't built.

45:44 You got buildings in here. We've got the same footprint of those buildings shown

45:50 in 1834 nearly 40 years later. There's clearly been a lot of alterations, additions, and demolitions. It's basically basically saying, isn't it these buildings were here? We've got the evidence they were here. Okay, we may have the written evidence that they were here, but is there one jot of evidence archaeologically in the ground that there was something here in the late 18th, early 19th century?

46:11 Yes, I believe there is. What we've got are handmade bricks. Now, those are certainly got to be late 18th, early 19th century.

46:18 Could have come from somewhere else and they could have come from somewhere else. But if you've got brickuilt buildings on the site, what's the point of bringing bricks in? You've got more bricks than you want. You you reuse them. I mean, you want to see the evidence in the ground, Tony. You can't find archaeology in the ground if the ground itself is gone.

46:38 Cover. Reload. I'm standing in what was Britain's first response to the French threat of invasion. A massive earn fortress that would have dominated the skyline. We haven't found any evidence of the grandiose improvements that were planned for it. But that must have suited to John Moore really fine because he believed that an army with superior weapons and tactics didn't need to hide behind huge fortifications. And he put his theory to the test right here, making this the birthplace of the modern British army. Heat. Heat.

Questions about this episode

Who speaks in "Archeologists Investigate The British Fort Built To Defend Against Napoleon"?

Martin (Host), Stu (Guest), Mick (Host), Helen (Guest), Phil (Guest), Bridge (Guest).

What is "Archeologists Investigate The British Fort Built To Defend Against Napoleon" about?

Archaeologists are investigating the Jean Cliff Redoubt, a fort built in Kent during the 1790s to defend Britain against a potential French invasion. The research focuses on the fort's design, its surrounding defenses, and its role as a pivotal military stronghold in response to the significant threat posed by the French forces at that time.

What is mentioned in this Timeline - World History Documentaries episode?

10 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Sha Cliff Redout, Sir John Moore, Napoleonic, William Twist, Common Dance House, Green Jackets. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "Archeologists Investigate The British Fort Built To Defend Against Napoleon"?

The episode runs 48 min; the transcript is about 8,646 words in 178 timestamped sections.

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