New Tavern Fort — Attraction in Gravesham

The new Tavern Fort is park of an area of Gravesend that includes the Milton Chantry chapel, Riverside Leisure Area and Gravesend Promenade.

The fort and leisure area are open during daylight hours and for special events. Milton Chantry is only open though certain hours of the day and run by English Heritage, in conjunction with Gravesham Council. Access to the fort is free apart from when special events are held in the park.

The fort contains a number of guns and cannon, used during it's history as a fort, as well as magazines used to store armaments, some of which can be see on display in the fort.

Open on weekends is the ammunition stores, with an array of displays relating to the New Tavern Fort's use as a gun emplacement, protecting the River Thames. In addition, there are also displays covering WW2, on the home front in Gravesend, with various types of air raid shelters and civilian life during WW2 . Admission to the ammunition stores is £1 per person, and there is an information sheet as to the purpose of which each room was used for, or the various displays.

On the promenade area, there is an open air gym free to use by the Gravesend Rowing Club.

On my visit, there was also a fun fair on the promenade and the New Tavern Fort have been used for a recent...

Having seen a lot of forts around the Medway/Kent area, few can compare to here, considering it is also now a park (opposed to somewhere like Tilbury across the river, which was protected). There's still a lot of the embankments to see, cannons complete with the rails and wheels (which you don't see often), plus you can now enter the tunnels (weekends only). Sadly it was cash only otherwise I would have jumped at the opportunity. Also home to Milton Chantry, the oldest building in Gravesend, an English Heritage site but free to enter (also weekends only).

Would be nice if the council did some litter picking...

Original fort built and loved in by Lt Colonel Charles Gordon of the Royal Engineers (aka later on General Gordon) nice place for a Sunday stroll with all the guns still in place. There's a tunnel system that's worth a look when open and a museum within grounds that's open occasionally. Best time to see it is in its splendor is during Fort in the Forties event. Down side to it as a public space and to much the disappointment of locals is that on most evenings it becomes a haunt for immigrants with gangs of Albanians and alike that put people...