Fort Halstead

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Fort Halstead is a research site of Dstl, an Executive Agency of the Ministry of Defence. It is situated on the crest of the Kentish North Downs, overlooking the town Sevenoaks. Originally constructed in 1892 as one of a ring of fortresses around London, Fort Halstead was to be manned by volunteers in the event of a crisis. However, it went under-used until the Government made it the base for the Ministry of Supply, from which it became the headquarters of the Royal Armament Research Development Establishment (RARDE). ^[1]

Employees at the site are reported to all have to sign the Official Secrets Act, but it it is nonetheless believed that Britain's development of the atomic bomb, hidden under the name High Explosive Research ("HER") was initially based at RARDE, where the first atomic bomb was developed under the directorship of William George Penney,^[1] who had been appointed Chief Superintendent Armament Research ("CSAR", called "Caesar") by C. P. Snow. Operation Hurricane saw the bomb conveyed by frigate to Australia and successfully exploded in the Montebello Islands. ^[1] In 1950 it is thought that the HER research was moved to a new site at AWRE Aldermaston in Berkshire.

In 1991, RARDE was amalgamated into the Defence Research Agency, which itself merged in 1995 to form the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency (DERA). Following a split of DERA in 2001, Fort Halstead came under the control of Dstl (Defence Science and Technology Laboratory). Its principal function is now research and forensic analysis into explosives, and the site's Forensic Explosives Laboratory was used in the investigation following the attempted 21 July 2005 London bombings.^[2] The facility the largest employer in the Sevenoaks district, with 1,300 personnel working on the site in 2000. ^[3]