Project Report – Bembridge Fort Trust – August 2026

Good afternoon from Bembridge Fort and time for another update on the ongoing progress to bring this unique Palmerston Fort back into Community use.

The Bembridge Fort Trust are pleased to report the progress continues to be excellent helped by another generous award of £20,000 from a Trust who recognised the importance and success of the Fort project to date – but wishes to remain anonymous.

From the events side the underground main Hidden Magazine Theatre, with its natural built-in air-conditioning continues to be a popular and fully booked out venue – now an Island favourite for jazz evenings, comedy shows, murder mysteries and a forthcoming lecture series. Please see the website www.bembridgefort.org for more information.

These, along with a further tidy up in the new parade ground had meant the fort is now ready for our new Tuesday evening sundowner open evenings on every Tuesday night in August with a great selection of food, drinks and exceptional views.

The Trust events team is already planning a comprehensive and even larger events program for 2027 and we look forward to workshops and many different events through the winter months. Our intensive tour program through August has been an amazing success with over 400 tickets sold – if there are any left, please grab a ticket now before the weather changes.

We would like to thank all the contractors, the Bembridge Fort Trust team, volunteers and all our supporters across the Island and now indeed across the world for their good wishes and donations. We hope to announce further good news later this year.

Perhaps as important is that the main fort works, using a team of Island contractors, has continued to push on after further discussions with Historic England and our architect.

We now have a firm plan through to the completion of first phase of the restoration of the original Victorian officers’ quarters. Some will remember that these large vaulted brick-built rooms have seen many different uses and indeed challenges in their life – They were remodelled and repurposed several times during the Victorian age after their completion in 1867, altered again for World War I and then extensively changed for World War II before being fully stripped with even covered firing points to provide extra offices during the 1980s.

Abandoned in the early 2000’s, continual water ingress and severe weather on the exposed location had seen the structures degrade such that most of the windows, doors and wood work had failed, huge areas 2 of multiple layers of mortar had detached and they had become unsafe to even access.

Now restoration is well underway with first fix electrics, alarm system, and even data cables all complete and second fix now underway. All replacement glazed external windows and doors are now in place while preserving and restoring as much of the originals as we could – and all the lost or restored corridor windows are now back from glazing and being installed. We are also now changing the entrance and exit doors to the corridor complex and have just completed removing an awful lot of rotten wood from inside the offices and replacing them with new custom cut wood made on site.

Next week we start on the main long northern corridor floor which sadly proved to have mostly rotten joists due to many years of water ingress. Once completed the whole corridor floors and some of the existing office floors will be sanded and revarnished while the concrete floor inserts from World War II (we suspect for machinery installation) will be recovered.

The plasterer has now completed remedial works using lime mortar for offices 1 through 4 with offices 5 and 6 not far behind. As part of this we are making a conscious effort where we have found exposed historical ghost images of stoves and pipework to make a feature of them and not just cover them up for the next hundred years.

The decorator has also been on site now for some weeks with an agreed colour pallet for external windows and doors – which are now looking great. The doors have now had multiple coats of protective stain and we are now switching to tackle the internal woodwork, bringing all the repaired and new wood up to the same level.

After the exposed brickwork has been sealed the internal walls and the new plaster will go into muted colours. With second fix electrics underway it was even good to see the first batch of new heaters arrive on site – great time to get a discount as apparently no one is buying ceramic Internet controlled heaters at this time of year. The plan is to have the first six offices completed by the end of September and we are now looking at starting to work on the guard room and prisoner cells.

The one large remaining item is the replacement of the second staircase that served the upper terreplein that was removed (and indeed sold off) in an early 1960s. We have scheduled monument consent and planning sign off for the new staircase which is a new design using a mixture of reclaimed bricks to replace a lost arch and a new staircase behind. This will hopefully be complete before second quarter of 2027.

The Trust is also pleased to announce that its ongoing work with Associated British Ports and our long-standing agreement to provide communication and automatic ship identification systems for the English Channel continues to develop. The new 3 phase will include new equipment and new high-speed fibre cable coming to the fort which opens up a multitude of opportunities for next year.

Please note we have put the late September workshops back to early November mainly due to pressures of the complex works and lack of hours in the day!

Thank you to The National Lottery Heritage Fund for their on-going support and advice.

Tim Wander, Trustee and Project Manager