Charles Fort – When built, Charles Fort was Britain’s biggest star-shaped fort – a state-of-the-art defense when artillery made the traditional castle obsolete (low, thick walls were tougher for cannons to breach than the tall, thinner walls of older castles).
The star design made defending any attack on its walls safer and more effective. Notice how the strongest walls face the sea and how the oldest buildings are crouched down below the potential cannon fire of attacking ships.
The British occupied this fort until Irish independence in 1922. Its interior buildings were torched in 1923 by anti-treaty IRA forces to keep it from being used by Free State troops during the Irish Civil War.
While most of the fort is just ruined buildings with nice views, there is an important exhibit filling two floors of the Barracks Stores building (the tall intact building).
Climbing the ramparts rewards with a great view, a chance to marvel at the cleverness of a “star-designed fort”, and gaze out to Kinsale Head to see where, in 1915, the Lusitania was torpedoed by Germans.
