Fortress

Fortress

Many military installations are known as forts, although they are not always fortified. Larger forts may class as fortresses; smaller ones formerly often bore the name of fortalices. The word fortification can also refer to the practice of improving an area's defence with defensive works. City walls are fortifications but not necessarily called fortresses.
The art of setting out a military camp or constructing a fortification traditionally classifies as castramentation, since the time of the Roman legions. The art/science of laying siege to a fortification and of destroying it has the popular name of siegecraft or 'siege warfare' and the formal name of poliorcetics. In some texts this latter term also applies to the art of building a fortification.
Fortification is usually divided into two branches, namely permanent fortification and field fortification. Permanent fortifications are erected at leisure, with all the resources that a state can supply of constructive and mechanical skill, and are built of enduring materials. Field fortifications are extemporized by troops in the field, perhaps assisted by such local labour and tools as may be procurable and with materials that do not require much preparation, such as earth, brushwood and light timber, or sandbags.
There is also an intermediate branch known as semi-permanent fortification. This is employed when in the course of a campaign it becomes desirable to protect some locality with the best imitation of permanent defences that can be made in a short time, ample resources and skilled civilian labour being available.
Castles are fortifications which are regarded as being distinct from the generic fort or fortress in that it describes a residence of a monarch or noble and commands a specific defensive territory.

The Fortress of Minas Morgul

The Fortress of Minas Morgul

A Fantasy Creation based on reality; A Minor Lair of Evil Southwest of Mordor

The Smuggler's Den

The Smuggler's Den

Hold it there laddie. There's luggers hoverin' at the Cove and the gobblers are out.... A Stinkibus is better than a noose I says. Us smugsmiths need to know that much to save our skin.... Look quick laddie! There's a cutter behind! Row for your life or it's the devil for both of us!"

Smugglers, also known as owlers, free traders and smugsmiths, were the scourge of the coastline 300 years ago. Matters got way out of hand in the 18th Century, when taxes were upped in a bid to fund foreign wars. Corruption cropped up on both sides of the law, with all kinds of chicanery resulting. Pitched battles became common scenes on the English coast, and conscientious officers often faced insuperable odds, with country folk closing ranks to protect the 'smugsmiths'. As it was, entire villages often became involved in the trade - the folk from the Scilly Isles nigh on depended on it. However, there were times when gangs went too far even for their own men. Whilst some smugglers might claim that they were just trying to make a living within the spirit of free trade, contraband goods attracted their fair share of rogues and rascals too

The Fort on the Hilltop at Devil's Dyke

The Fort on the Hilltop at Devil's Dyke

The Devil was angry at the conversion of Sussex, one of the last counties to be converted from Paganism, and especially at the way churches were being built in every Sussex village. So he decided to dig right through the South Downs, a range of hills along the south of Britain. He swore that he would dig all the way through the hills to let the sea flood Sussex in a single night and drown the new Christians. He started inland near the village of Poynings and dug furiously sending huge clods of earth everywhere. One became Chanctonbury hill, another Cissbury hill, another Rackham Hill and yet another Mount Caburn.

Towards midnight, the noise he was making disturbed an old woman, who looked out to see what was happening. When she realized what the Devil was doing, she lit a candle and set it on her windowsill, holding up a metal sieve in front of it to create a dimly glowing globe. The Devil could barely believe that the sun had already risen, but the old woman had woken her rooster who let out a loud crowing and Satan fled believing that the morning had already come. Some say, that as he fled out over the English Channel, a great lump of earth fell from his cloven hoof, and that became the Isle of Wight; others say that he bounded northwards into Surrey, where his heavy landing formed the hollow called the Devil's Punch Bowl.

Devil's Dyke is a V-shaped valley on the South Downs Way in southern England, near Brighton and Hove. It is part of the Southern England Chalk Formation. Devil's Dyke is on the way to Brighton and is a big hill at the side of the road. It is a misconception common amongst local residents of Brighton that the valley was formed by some kind of glacial action, the myth of a 'glacier' being a misunderstanding of accounts such as this one from the Encyclopaedia of Brighton by Timothy Carder (1990):
 "In reality the 300-foot-deep valley was carved by tremendous amounts of water running off the Downs during the last Ice Age when large amounts of snow thawed and the frozen chalk prevented any further absorption; erosion was aided by the freeze-thaw cycle and the valley was deepened by the 'sludging' of the saturated chalk."
The Devil's Dyke V-shaped dry valley is the result of solifluction and river erosion. More than fourteen thousand years ago, the area experienced an intensely cold climate (but not glacial conditions). Snowfields capped the South Downs. Permafrost conditions meant that the chalk was permanently frozen. In summer, the snowfields melted and saturated the top layer of soil, because the water could not permeate the frozen chalk underneath. Waterlogged material situated above the permafrost slid down the gradient, removing material by friction, exposing deeper layers of frozen chalk. When the Ice Age ended, the snowfields covering the South Downs melted, and rivers formed across Sussex. The Devil's Dyke valley was completed by one such river.
The hills surrounding the valley offer views of the South Downs, The Weald, and – on a clear day – the Isle of Wight. It is the site of ramparts, all that remain of an Iron Age hillfort.