Battleground Sussex by John Grehan & Martin Mace

Author:John Grehan & Martin Mace
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781783460991
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Published: 2013-06-03T04:00:00+00:00

A gun emplacement and magazine of the 19th century Lower Battery at Newhaven, which is now adjacent to the West Beach car park. (TQ 448001).

In the same year the decaying Brighton defences were replaced by the Great East Street Battery. This work held twenty antique 20-pounder cannon.

Strangely all these batteries were not under the jurisdiction of the military. The Master Gunner, who was the officer in charge of each battery, was a civilian as was his second in command, though he was also a trained gunner. These were both full-time posts paid for by the Government. Until the middle of the eighteenth century the cost of maintaining and manning coastal defences had to be borne locally. At Brighton, for instance, a quarter of the profit from each boat on the beach had to go towards the purchase of powder and shot for the gun batteries.

The rest of the personnel were local volunteers, often old soldiers.

Though France and her allies amassed an armada of flat-bottomed boats along the coast from St Malo to Dunkirk the Royal Navy kept the enemy fleet blockaded in its own harbours. Twice in 1759, however, the French were able to slip through the blockades with the intention of rounding up the invasion craft and escorting them across the Channel. But on both occasions the French were followed and intercepted by the Royal Navy and the French fleets of Brest and Toulon were eventually caught and destroyed in Quiberon Bay.

A little over thirty years after the destruction of the Toulon fleet at Quiberon Bay, France once again threatened to invade southern England. This was the time of the French Revolution and its greatest military leader, Napoleon Bonaparte.

In the summer (i.e. the invasion season) of both 1793 and 1794, huge tented camps were formed at Brighton. Accommodating 10,000-15,000 troops, the 1793 camp was established along the seafront running westwards for over a mile from the present-day Regency Square. The 1794 camp was pitched on Race Hill. Elaborate training exercises and mock battles, with the Prince of Wales happily playing his part as Colonel of the 10th Dragoons, were a frequent spectacle in and around Brighton at this time.4

A signal station, more correctly called a telegraph, was also sited on Race Hill. Messages could be sent and received to and from the adjacent stations at Seaford in the east and Shoreham to the west. These telegraphs were part of a network of signal stations which the Admiralty built on the coast to allow communications both out to the ships of the Royal Navy and along the coast. Sixteen of these stations were in Sussex.5

Permanent barracks were later built at Brighton with one for infantry being raised opposite the stables of the Royal Pavilion and another for cavalry along the Lewes Road. At Chichester in the Broyle Road, the Roussillion Barracks were built to accommodate 1,500 men, and at nearby Selsey a wooden barracks housed a further 300 soldiers. Shoreham, Southwick, Steyning, Worthing, Littlehampton, Arundel and Bognor Regis all had barracks during the Napoleonic Wars.

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