Adrian Thomas, #SaveLodgeHill campaign manager, shares what he has unearthed about Lodge Hill's fascinating history.
Last November, I was fortunate to get behind the impregnable fences and guarded gates at Lodge Hill (with permission, you understand, rather than by stealth!). While I was able to see why this place is such a refuge for wildlife, the structures that dot the landscape hinted at an interesting human history too.
Those signs are rather like whispers for nature is quietly reclaiming the paths, finding little weaknesses in the tarmac and silently gnawing at abandoned buildings. But it was enough to set me digging to find out more about Lodge Hill's past, and how this has helped preserve the nightingales and other wildlife.
Please excuse that I am no historian, but here is my potted history of the site as I understand it. At the end I include some fascinating links to far more detail. If anyone has any of their own memories or knowledge they might want to share, I'd be delighted to hear
The story starts many centuries ago, when the area around nearby Upnor Castle was strategically important because of its ready access to the sea, via the Medway Estuary. By the 17th century it had become a major storage site for munitions and gunpowder.
More safe storage space was needed, however, and between 1874-76 a new facility to hold gunpowder was built near Chattenden, part of what is now the Lodge Hill site. The ‘bunkers’ are technically called ‘magazines’ - basically, they are sheds, part underground, surrounded by earth walls to take the blast should someone have a little accident!
You need soldiers to guard a stash like this, so Chattenden Barracks was built next to Lodge Hill to house 120 soldiers. Also, a narrow gauge steam railway was built to transport the gunpowder up from the river.
Yet more space was needed, so more gunpowder magazines were built, this time on the main Lodge Hill site. They were opened in 1899, and by about 1905 the railway had been extended right through Lodge Hill.
"Upnor Castle" is a steam engine locomotive built in 1954 for the Lodge Hill and Upnor Railway in Kent. It was passed to the Welshpool & Llanfair railway in 1962 (c) R~P~M
Each magazine was set well apart from its neighbour, again in case of accidents, and for extra protection the land between each magazine was planted with woodland. You can begin to imagine how a site which was so well guarded and was mainly some underground magazines in a huge wood might be a great site for wildlife
The development of aircraft meant that Lodge Hill was now vulnerable to attack from above, so the first anti-aircraft gunning station in Britain was built here, and still stands today.
Ammunition continued to be stored at Lodge Hill until 1961, when the last scheduled train service ran, and the site was then used as barracks and training facilities for the Royal School of Military Engineering (RSME) and the Joint Service Bomb Disposal School.
You can still see on site the mini street mocked up to look like part of Belfast, and training for Iraq and Afghanistan also occurred here. However, the barracks were finally demolished in 2005.
'Belfast': a mock up of part of a Northern Irish street. (c) Julian Hoffman
If you have any passion for steam trains, then this paper written in 1966 will keep you happy for hours with tales of roller bearings and Walschaerts valve gears; most importantly, it also has old black and white photos of some of the engines.
This Facebook page is also a wealth of information and images.
What I was astonished to find was that one of our stalwart volunteers at nearby RSPB Northward Hill, David Saunders, did police diving training at Lodge Hill 35 years ago in the ponds there, fishing out unexploded ordnance.
However, 45 years ago he was a zookeeper at Whipsnade, and in an amazing coincidence one of the engines on the little steam railway there originally came from the Lodge Hill line. The locomotive, Chevalier, still runs to this day, while David now lives one mile from Lodge Hill at Chattenden. Oh, the entwinements of history!
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