Located directly to the north east of Chathams town centre, Fort Amherst is one of the country’s best preserved Napoleonic Fortresses. It is a Scheduled Ancient Monument, previously on Historic England’s ‘at risk’ register, with numerous listed structures and sites.

The ambition for the ‘Command of the Heights’ project was to restore and enhance Fort Amherst, as a space of historic significance, with a strong vision for the future, and to inject new lifeblood into the area, by engaging people from all walks of life to help shape the future of the site.

The vast site poses many logistical challenges, with a network of tunnels, barrier ditches and hilly terrain. The project includes the conversion of former gun casemates at the summit of the site into an open-air theatre; creation of a new visitor access to the site from the main road; installation of a new WC block and demolition of a former MOD office building to reinstate the historic lines of the lower site defences.

Engineering services include new power and water distribution across the site, M&E services to the theatre, landscape lighting, and diversion of a former UK Power Networks substation.

Performance photographs are of ’The Chatham Witch’ by Icon Theatre, Chatham, Kent.

 Finalist – Landscape Institute Awards 2020

Images: Phil Pead – Medway Council & © Simon Kelsey / www.praxisdesign.co.uk

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