Fort Pitt, Kent

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"Chatham Dockyard from Fort Pitt", 1831. This is the view north from the fort, down the River Medway towards the estuary.

Fort Pitt was a fort built between 1805 and 1819 on the high ground of the boundary between Chatham and Rochester, Kent. It did not last long, becoming a hospital for invalid soldiers in 1828, with an asylum added in 1849. Florence Nightingale started the first Army Medical School there in 1860, but by the 1920s the hospital was closed and the site converted into a girls school.

Nothing is now visible of the original fort, but the name is still given to the hill on which it stood. From the hill it is possible to see Fort Clarence tower to the west, and the remains of Fort Amherst to the north east. A ditch, wall and (reputedly) tunnels linked the three into a single fortified Napoleonic defensive line, defending the naval docks against a (land-based) attack from the south.

Fort Pitt is also the location of the fictional duel between Mr. Tracy Tupman and Dr. Slammer in the Charles Dickens novel The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club.

v • d • e

Forts around Medway

Medieval Rochester Castle

Tudor Upnor Castle

Inner Ring (Napoleonic): Fort Clarence · Fort Pitt · Fort Amherst · Fort Gillingham

Outer Ring (Palmerston):

Fort Borstal · Fort Bridgewood · Fort Horsted · Fort Luton · Twydall Redoubts · Fort Hoo · Fort Darent

[edit] Fort Pitt Grammar School for Girls

Fort Pitt School is built upon the site of the old fort, sharing the campus with Mid Kent College and the University College for the Creative Arts (formerly KIAD). The school was Girls technical school until their abolishment (the tripartite system was replace by just High and Grammar schools) in the 1970s (?) where it was converted to a grammar school for girls, aged 11 to 18.