Star Battery (EHER 849)

Napoleonic artillery fort and outwork battery at Widford, forming part of the Chelmsford entrenchments; built 1803. Mostly destroyed; part of fort survives as an earthwork.

Star Battery and Old Barracks 1796. Later used as a workhouse. <1> Part of Chelmsford's Napoleonic defences (see EHERs 5742, 8930 and 8931). The Star Battery was built in 1803 and described as a 'field fort'. It was to accommodate 600 men with a detached openwork protecting its southwestern flank. This was to overlook and command the Great London Road which passed through Widford. The battery was at the western end of a defensive chain 2.8 km long, which terminated at the larger artillery fort at Galleywood Common (see EHER 8930). The defences were never used and dismantled prior to Napoleon's final defeat in 1815. Most of the Star Battery was obliterated by the Chelmsford to London railway built in the last century. Part of the easternmost ditch survives within Chelmsford Golf Course at TL 69860488. <2> - <8> Site Assessment = Levelled. <1> Mostly destroyed, but some of the eastern earthworks survive in golf course. <2> Information from NRHE On the south of St Johns Hospital (Old Barracks) the Ordnance Survey show traces of embankments, in fact the western end of the 'embankments', but omit apparent traces of 'Star-Battery' adjacent to the railway cutting. <9> TL 6967 0491 (FCE). A single bastion of 'Star-Battery' see <9> survives against the railway fence to the south of the golf club house. The feature survives as a 'V'-shaped ditch in plan, with the suggestion of an internal bank 0.1m in height defined by a low scarp. The ditch is about 1.0m in depth. The feature is now smoothed and in places disturbed by the golf course with pathways worn down its slopes, it is overlain to the south by the 18th tee. To the north are a number of minor surface irregularities probably the result of gravel extraction or former bunkers. To the west any further evidence of the battery has been removed by the railway line. The battery occupies a commanding position with falling ground to the east and south, with more gentle fall to the west and north. It is covered by short cropped grass of the fairway. <10> TL 696 049 (GCE). An artillery fort plus an open outwork to the southwest were built at Widford in 1803 as the left flank of the Chelmsford entrenchments, a chain of defences designed to block an advance on London should the French land on the Essex coast. The entrenchments were disused by 1815. The scheme was planned and construction supervised by the Royal Engineers whose original plan and report of 6 August 1803 exists in the Public Record Office (MR 1401). This plan shows that the fort at Widford indeed resembled a star in plan, although contra <9> no contemporary authority has been found for the use of the name Star Battery. The outwork and most of the fort were destroyed by the construction of the London-Chelmsford railway line in the middle of the nineteenth century. Only the fort's easternmost salient survives on Chelmsford Golf Course at TL 6966 0492 immediately east of the railway fence and north of the 18th tee. Best preserved is the ditch which is up to 1.5m deep externally and 1m internally. The north-east arm of this ditch becomes increasingly shallow towards the west. At its west end it turns sharply north and dies out after 20m. The remains of an earthen dam lie across the junction of the salient ditch with the northern extension. Map evidence <11> suggests that this is a later agricultural adaptation of the ditch to turn it into a beast pond. Externally there are traces of a slight counterscarp bank or glacis. Internally the rampart survives no more than 0.2m high. Its poor preservation is in part accounted for by the presence of narrow ridge and furrow ploughing which overlies both it and the inner face of the ditch. The earthworks of the fort were planned at 1:1000 scale by RCHME as part of a survey of the whole of the Chelmsford entrenchments. See archive in NMR for complete earthwork descriptions and full details of the survey. <12> Additional references <13> - <17>