Volume Twelve - Pre-Victorian to the Present Day - further aspects - Defence of the Realm - Penarth Head Fort and Coastal Battery . . .

The Defence of the Bristol Channel had been previously investigated :

1852 - The Army and Navy - Fortifications in the Bristol Channel - The Board of Ordnance have determined upon erecting a battery of guns in the neighbourhood of Penarth head, near Cardiff, and a party of the Royal Engineers have been engaged in examining and inspecting the head and the adjacent coast, with the view of defences for the better protection of the Bristol Channel at that part. - The Examiner [1123] [499] also The Illustrated London News [121] 3rd April 1852.

1855 - Correspondence from J. E. Bernard, (Surveyor and engineer to Cardiff Local Board of Health) to James Thompson regarding sites on Penarth Head for Royal Engineers including a plan of the proposed batteries. [Glamorgan Archives Reference : DPL/812/3.9.10] [599]

1862 - Naval and Military - It has been announced that the line of fortifications for the protection of the Bristol Channel has been determined on by the Government , and is to be the line of hills extending from east to west at the southern extremity of Uphill Bay, instead near Weston-super-Mare, and connected with the positive opposite coast near Penarth, south of Cardiff, exactly by two islands called the Steep and Flat Holmes.

Batteries will be established on Brean Down, on the Somersetshire coast, on the two islands, and on Lavernock Point, below Penarth, on the Welsh coast ; thus effectually protecting Cardiff and the mouth of the Severn. Under Brean Down on the Somersetshire coast, on the northern side, it is proposed - but we do not understand that Government has yet adopted the proposal - to construct a deep-water harbour, under cover of the batteries, where vessels laden with South Wales coal can securely discharge their cargoes. This harbour will be connected with the Bristol and Exeter and Central Somerset railways, and so with the metropolis. - The Spectator [1194] [499] 15 February 1862.

1862 - Bristol Channel Defences - The projected fortifications for the defence of the Bristol Channel and the estuary of the Severn are at once to be erected. On the English side of the channel a heavy battery will be erected on the extreme western point of Brean Down, a promontory which runs out a considerable distance into the channel, having a high elevation throughout.