# Fort Scoveton, Pembrokeshire



## silverstealth (May 16, 2008)

FORT SCOVESTON 

This place is a fully camouflaged massive fort, even from a hundred yards away you would not see it on the landscape. Fully overgrown with foilage its a hidden piece of history with lots of charm.

Commenced August 1861 Completed April 1864 
Cost £45,462 

Northern Line Defences 

Type – Land Front Polygonal 

Ditch - Dry 

Guns 32 

Barrack Accommodation 128 

ARMAMENT 

Intended 32 guns but no armament shown on 1886 and 1889 returns. Some reports state ‘never armed’. 

Technical History 

This fort was originally intended to be the central work of the Northern line defences of Milford Haven consisting of six works covering the northern land approach. 

A hexagonal work with sides 130 yards in length, it is surrounded by a dry ditch 36 feet wide at the bottom with an escarp of masonry 22 feet high. The counterscarp is cut from natural rock. It is flanked with one double and four single caponiers on two stories with access over a rolling bridge and tunnel through the gorge. The work is enclosed by a rampart with chemin des rondes, covered way and glacis. It was planned to mount 32 guns on the ramparts and had accommodation for 128 men in bomb proof barrack rooms, together with a main magazine and stores. The rear faces are protected from reverse fire by a parados and a traverse thrown across the interior parade. 

For most of it’s life it served as barrack accommodation or stood empty under a caretaker.. During WW1 the fort became the main camp for troops manning extensive trenches and field works between Weare Point and Port Lion. A large number of hutments were constructed within and outside the fort to serve a training and transit camp. It was abandoned after WW1 and was sold to the local farmer in October 1932 for £1,400. During WW11 it saw active service once more as an AA gun battery and was used by the locals as an unofficial air raid shelter. It was used to store large quantities of ammunition during the build up to the Normandy Landings. 

It is now derelict and overgrown as the pictures show. 

Suicide at the fort.

Coroner slams national press 
From the archive, first published Thursday 29th Sep 2005. 

THERE is absolutely no evidence to link the suicide of a popular doctor with the death of a woman he had treated, an inquest has heard. 

Several national newspapers carried reports suggesting 44-year-old Dr Paul Goodson, from Crundale, chose to take his own life because of the death of Mrs Alison Webster. 

The 23-year-old mum died in hospital the day after Dr Goodson had seen her at her home in Sageston, as the doctor on duty in the `Care on Call' system. 

But the inquest into Dr Goodson's death heard that there was no evidence that he even knew Mrs Webster had died, let alone felt guilty. The suicide note made no mention of Mrs Webster, or any problems with patients. 

The Pembrokeshire coroner Mr Michael Howells said that because of the publicity, the inquest would go into more detail than was customary, and after recording a verdict of death by self-administered drug overdose, the coroner criticised the press for their speculation. 

"The cause of [Dr Goodson] taking his own life was, according to the note, unrelated to the death of Mrs Webster. 

"If anything could be done to expunge the idea he was suffering from a guilt complex about Mrs Webster's death, perhaps this inquest would resolve that issue." 

Mr Howells went on: "The circumstances of the publicity arising from this death have caused me considerable concern. 

"I don't want to be pompous and talk about contempt of court, but the reports make it clear that inquests had been opened, yet no attempt was made to make contact with my office to ascertain the circumstances. 

"What's happened is that they have put two and two together and made five. 

"It would not surprise me in the least if someone decided to make a complaint to the Press Complaints Commission." 

The inquest heard that Mr Goodson's body was found by farmer Peter Lloyd at Scoveston Fort on August 10. 

He had hanged himself, but had also injected himself with a lethal dose of morphine. Almost nothing said in the inquest gave any indication as to why Dr Goodson - described by Mr Howells as "a fine and respected member of his practice" - had taken his own life. 

His widow, Bethan, and Dr John Davies, Dr Goodson's partner in the Law Street practice, both testified to the effect that in all their contact with him in the time leading up to his death, Dr Goodson had seemed fine. 

On the night before his death, he had even researched flights on the internet in preparation for a forthcoming family holiday. 

The pathologist who carried out the post mortem reported that Dr Goodson was known to suffer from depression, although Mr Howells commented: "I don't know how he knows that." 

The inquest into Mrs Webster's death, which had also been scheduled for last Thursday, has been adjourned for further investigations. 

The coroner hastened to add that those investiations had nothing to do with Dr Goodson. 












The magazine room is massive.
















Flanking Gallery






The Barracks 





















Mini Magazine











Entrance Tunnel






Two of the three underground Levels






More technical info and images at www.silverstealth.co.uk


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## dangerous dave (May 16, 2008)

nice place shots are up to your normal amazing standard i see


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## boxerheaven (May 16, 2008)

interesting write up good piccys


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## Neosea (May 16, 2008)

Fantastic, thanks


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## reddwarf9 (May 16, 2008)

Wow, nice find. I see what you mean about camouflage, on GE just looks like a bunch of trees. Well done


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## Foxylady (May 17, 2008)

Good stuff, as always. 
Interesting history. Very strange and sad about the suicide.


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## Exploretime (Jul 16, 2008)

*Scoveston fort 16/07/2008*

Hi, i went to Scoveston fort last night to do abit of exploring and found its well overgrown,i doubt anyone has been in there in some months. You can still get through the entrance(which looks locked but if you push the door will find its not),and can only get as far as the first few buildings and then its just stinging nettles and bushes. I tried for about an hour to get through the scrub but was unsuccessful (i had no tools to cut the nettles). I will be going back soon to try again. I did however find another tunnel which i would image not many people who go there would see,and i will be exploring this when i go back.


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## Lightbuoy (Jul 16, 2008)

Yet another report I seem to have missed! 

What a great find SS 

As usual, crackin' selection of snaps. Just got to love these Forts.

Lb:jimlad:


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## chizyramone (Jul 17, 2008)

Cracking report.

Have promised myself to have a look next time I go home to see the folks.

Born and raised 3 miles from the place and only went there twice


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## GaryDave (Aug 1, 2008)

Took a second trip there earlier today as the weather was looking nice, literally just stepped through the gate and got caught by the farmer who owns it. Told to move on... end of story.

*Edit*
I should note that the Farmer is more than happy to let photographers in, so long as they ask him for permission first. He lives in whatever farm is close to it... if that helps.


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## Displayed (Aug 24, 2009)

Hey guys just a quick note, that i found out from friends of the farmer, if anyone goes here and that farmer chases them away from the fort, its not so much for the tresspasing, more for the fact that he is protector of endangered bats that live in the fort. 

Just a notice.


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## Voioceofbats (Mar 2, 2022)

Displayed said:


> Hey guys just a quick note, that i found out from friends of the farmer, if anyone goes here and that farmer chases them away from the fort, its not so much for the tresspasing, more for the fact that he is protector of endangered bats that live in the fort.
> 
> Just a notice.


Yes, this site ia very significant for bats and people going in there any time between autumn and spring (Sept. to April) but particularly winter, will cause significant disturbance (and therefore harm) to these protected species - so please don't.


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## night crawler (Mar 2, 2022)

Voioceofbats said:


> Yes, this site ia very significant for bats and people going in there any time between autumn and spring (Sept. to April) but particularly winter, will cause significant disturbance (and therefore harm) to these protected species - so please don't.


This was posted in 2008 and the doors do say Private. I dare say any one would be aware


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## Hayman (Mar 3, 2022)

Voioceofbats said:


> Yes, this site ia very significant for bats and people going in there any time between autumn and spring (Sept. to April) but particularly winter, will cause significant disturbance (and therefore harm) to these protected species - so please don't.


As an aside, I am somewhat confused and amused by the way bats are treated in this country. Just compare how bats and their habitats are legally protected compared with rats and their habitats. Similarly, compare badgers with mice or wasps.

Humans in general and governments in general are very selective in their treatment of animals. Humans being just one species of animal, it is not surprising that they will kill millions/billions of animals that are injurious to humans; but why the draconian penalties for disturbing bat colonies?

Is it because they “eat flies, moths and other insects and thereby control insect populations very effectively. Some bats also serve as pollinators and seed dispersers of many plants that are important to humans”? Even though bat numbers are not that great.

Or perhaps because – as flying mammals – they are seen as somehow special. Then there are the blood-sucking bats, stars of many a horror movie.

While bats may “serve as pollinators and seed dispersers of many plants that are important to humans”, bees are much more important in this respect. Yet DEFRA has removed the ban on the use of bee-killing Thiamethoxam; “emergency use” is now allowed. This neonicotinoid pesticide was banned across the UK and Europe in 2018 after scientists confirmed neonicotinoids are toxic to pollinators, including bees – and, presumably, bats. Yet, to placate the sugar beet farmers, because the virus “Beet Yellows” can cut yields by as much as 50 per cent, this poison still banned in the EU is now to be available to post-Brexit British farmers.

Sugar is no more necessary to humans than is tobacco; the use of both can be injurious to humans. British bats are neither necessary nor normally injurious to humans. Perhaps they should be grateful they do not carry a disease that affects sugar beet yields. Humans are very species-ist.

Urban explorers have a duty to “take only photographs, leave only footprints”. Should they treat all species of animals equally?


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## Mearing (Mar 4, 2022)

Hayman said:


> As an aside, I am somewhat confused and amused by the way bats are treated in this country. Just compare how bats and their habitats are legally protected compared with rats and their habitats. Similarly, compare badgers with mice or wasps.
> 
> Humans in general and governments in general are very selective in their treatment of animals. Humans being just one species of animal, it is not surprising that they will kill millions/billions of animals that are injurious to humans; but why the draconian penalties for disturbing bat colonies?
> 
> ...


I certainly agree with your views regarding the harm that neonicotinoids sugar and tobacco cause but not on rats.

Rats are a resourceful and destructive nuisance and must be controlled.
I grew up in the country and in 1948 worked with a team on a thrashing drum, it was a legal requirement then to put wire netting arond the stack being thrashed in order to prevent the rat population migrating to the next stack as they were so destuctive.

My wife has a bird feeder despite my reservations ( suppressed because of the pleasure it gives her ) and of course on occasion an enterprising foraging rat discovers it, and sets up home under my workshop (handy for the free food
source). I then have to kill it because if I don't my wokshop would collapse
into the extensive excavations of his/her new residence!

In the days of my youth most country folk would say that the only good rat was a dead rat and I adhere to that!


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## Hayman (Mar 4, 2022)

Mearing said:


> I certainly agree with your views regarding the harm that neonicotinoids sugar and tobacco cause but not on rats.
> 
> Rats are a resourceful and destructive nuisance and must be controlled.
> I grew up in the country and in 1948 worked with a team on a thrashing drum, it was a legal requirement then to put wire netting arond the stack being thrashed in order to prevent the rat population migrating to the next stack as they were so destuctive.
> ...


We seem to be of a similar age. Where did you live in the country? A “thrashing drum” and “the stack being thrashed” implies the days before combined harvesters, when a tractor would tow a reaper-binder, and the stooks of corn would be built into a stack until the local thrasher/thresher would arrive with his machine to deal with the year’s harvest. Perhaps using a steam traction or stationary engine to drive the thrashing/threshing machine. Those were the days!



The 1880-built south Devon family country house my parents had as a guest house in the 1950s-1960s had a back kitchen with a typical black iron coal/coke fired oven. There was a gap of about four inches where it was supported on short iron legs. One day a rat hid itself underneath. I took a poker and thrashed about with it. Withdrawing the poker, I found the end was covered in blood. I then extracted the dead rat.


The main kitchen had a similar black iron stove that also heated the hot water for the house. The cylinder's thick asbestos jacket was home to hundreds/thousands of black beetles that would come out in the dark and scavenge the tiled kitchen floor for anything to eat. I revelled in going back into the kitchen and stamping on the beetles. Eventually a firm was brought in to get rid of all the black beetles – much to my disappointment.

In the 1990s I found a half-dead rat in the chiller cabinet I was removing from a cafe my firm was renovating. I took the rat by the tail, placed it beneath a wheel of my van, and drove over it, quickly crushing it to death.

I also quickly killed a family cat that had had its hind quarters crushed by a car. And, when I worked with horses, I took a chronically lame hunter to the local hunt kennels to be put down.

I'm reminded that, when a farmer was cutting a field of corn, as the area of uncut corn got smaller and smaller, the rats still in it tried to escape. Farm hands with terriers would watch for any fleeing rats, sending their dogs after them.


And people keep white rats (and mice) as pets!


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## Mearing (Mar 4, 2022)

Hayman said:


> We seem to be of a similar age. Where did you live in the country? A “thrashing drum” and “the stack being thrashed” implies the days before combined harvesters, when a tractor would tow a reaper-binder, and the stooks of corn would be built into a stack until the local thrasher/thresher would arrive with his machine to deal with the year’s harvest. Perhaps using a steam traction or stationary engine to drive the thrashing/threshing machine. Those were the days!
> 
> 
> 
> ...


For some unknown reason I've lived to be 91 years of age, just luck I think!

The thrashing team I worked with operated around Bletchley,now known as Milton Keynes and pretty well all the farms we worked on are concreted over, things move on but I'm not really convinced about " progress ".

The job involved cycling 8 to 9 miles daily each way with a hard days work in between, the weight of a standard sack of grain was two and a quarter hundred weight ( 18 stone in old money ) one was expected to carry them on ones back. we used a Field Marshall single cylinder diesel tractor then and my boss expected it be running and the tackle ready to go when he arrived with the rest of the crew including some land girls at 8am.
Sounds like a comedy skit about the good old days!
I have taken part in coralling rabbits as the area of the field the reaper/binder cut diminshed.

Agriculture has changed since then when it was small fields and lots of hedgerows ( linear woodland ) much more wild life then. Times change.

Incidentally I do encourage foxes these days as no longer keeping fowl they are not my enemy!


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## BikinGlynn (Mar 4, 2022)

Barn Owls (along with quite a few birds) are schedule 1 protected so pretty much the same protection as bats but these are often disturbed by explorers (myself included) but I dont believe anyone ever gets prosecuted for disturbing them!
I believe teh law states you are not allowed to "intestinally disturb" so tbh u can get away with going anywhere if you claim you didnt think there was any in there!


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## Hayman (Mar 5, 2022)

Mearing said:


> For some unknown reason I've lived to be 91 years of age, just luck I think!
> 
> The thrashing team I worked with operated around Bletchley,now known as Milton Keynes and pretty well all the farms we worked on are concreted over, things move on but I'm not really convinced about " progress ".
> 
> ...


I’m ten years younger.

My wife came from Winslow, not far from Bletchley; and she considered herself a country girl.

I’ve seen the single cylinder Field Marshalls thumping away at vintage tractor shows. At one there was a dozen or more in a line, all shiny green.

When I worked with horses, I recall the sacks of oats I had to unload from the lorry were around 180 lbs each. And today a 50 kg bag of sand or cement is considered heavy!

As a boy in Devon, I spent two weeks on a farm outside Hemyock, near Cullompton. The farmer had a reaper-binder. And a little grey Fergie.

He went out rabbit shooting. See the attached photo of me and the cowman - with the day's bag. And one of the farmer himself with the rabbits for the pot.


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## Mearing (Mar 5, 2022)

Hayman said:


> I’m ten years younger.
> 
> My wife came from Winslow, not far from Bletchley; and she considered herself a country girl.
> 
> ...


Thanks for photos, reckon health & safety today would be unhappy about the gun!

I know( or knew ) Winslow as I travelled through it often on my way to Compton Verney, and I guess your wife knows Swanbourne too.

Happy memories of the Field Marshall, ours too was a green one,decent looking.
I recall the unusual starting procedure, it was 6litre capacity single cylinder engine and my boss wouldn't spend money on cartridge start so it was take a deep breath and swing it by hand. Good excercise on a cold December morning!

Rambling again must be getting old!


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## Hayman (Mar 6, 2022)

Mearing said:


> Thanks for photos, reckon health & safety today would be unhappy about the gun!
> 
> I know( or knew ) Winslow as I travelled through it often on my way to Compton Verney, and I guess your wife knows Swanbourne too.
> 
> ...


Thanks. And the shotgun was not 'broken'.

My wife's family home was 33 Sheep Street, just up from the square. As a child, one of her 'jobs' was to go to the pub with a tankard to bring it back full for her father. 

I've heard of cartridge start for tractors, bulldozers, etc. The Ferguson had two fuel tanks. A small one for petrol, to start on; and a larger TVO (tractor vapourising oil - paraffin) for normal running. As I expect you know, the TVO was much cheaper than petrol.

When my step-father worked at a Buckfastleigh - driving a Chaseside front loader - he would chop the wood for the mess room fire; a good way of keeping warm on a cold day.


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## Mearing (Mar 6, 2022)

Hayman said:


> Thanks. And the shotgun was not 'broken'.
> 
> My wife's family home was 33 Sheep Street, just up from the square. As a child, one of her 'jobs' was to go to the pub with a tankard to bring it back full for her father.
> 
> ...


Yes, The Fordson E27N Major had petrol and TVO tanks. I owned a couple of tractors with similar, one was an F type Fordson of about 1940 or thereabouts vintage and the other an International Junior of about 1918, very rare now and worth a fortune.

Thank you for the interesting correspondence.


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## Hayman (Mar 7, 2022)

Mearing said:


> Yes, The Fordson E27N Major had petrol and TVO tanks. I owned a couple of tractors with similar, one was an F type Fordson of about 1940 or thereabouts vintage and the other an International Junior of about 1918, very rare now and worth a fortune.
> 
> Thank you for the interesting correspondence.


A pleasure. Another thing about the Ferguson was that the gear lever was used to energise the electric starter. There was a postion marked S. No need for key ignition, with the chance of rainwater getting at the contacts.


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## Mearing (Mar 8, 2022)

Hayman said:


> A pleasure. Another thing about the Ferguson was that the gear lever was used to energise the electric starter. There was a postion marked S. No need for key ignition, with the chance of rainwater getting at the contacts.


Yes, that was a clever innovation,foxed me once!


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## Walrus75 (Mar 8, 2022)

Interesting to see it picked out by LIDAR on the NLS mapping site.
Side by side georeferenced maps viewer - Map images - National Library of Scotland (nls.uk)


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## Hayman (Mar 8, 2022)

Mearing said:


> Yes, that was a clever innovation,foxed me once!


What struck me as out of place was the hand-operated, long chromed accelerator lever. The shiny chrome was so different from the rest of the machine - and the lever did not seem that strong. At least it could be used easily by a thickly-gloved hand on a freezing cold day, and its length allowed for fine speed adjustments. A foot-operated pedal might not have been so clever when crossing rough ground.


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