Bayard's Cove Fort

Bayard's Cove Fort
Dartmouth, Devon
The fort entrance, viewed from the quay
Bayard's Cove Fort
Coordinates	50°20′52″N 3°34′39″W / 50.34789°N 3.57749°W / 50.34789; -3.57749
Type	Artillery fort
Site information
Owner	English Heritage
Open to the public	Yes
Condition	Ruined
Site history
Materials	Limestone
Events	English Civil War

Bayard's Cove Fort, also known historically as Berescove or Bearscore Castle, is an English 16th-century artillery blockhouse, built to defend the harbour entrance at Dartmouth in Devon. Constructed in the early part of the century, it had eleven gunports for heavy artillery and was intended to engage enemy vessels that broke past the external defences of the Dartmouth and Kingswear castles. It remained armed during the English Civil War, but was neglected in the 18th century and used for storage. The fort was restored in the late 19th century and is now managed by English Heritage and open to visitors.

Bayard's Cove Fort was built in the early 16th century to protect the coastal town of Dartmouth in Devon. In the medieval period, the town's harbour, located in the estuary of the River Dart, was an important trading and fishing port, able to hold up to 600 vessels; it continued to prosper in the 15th century on the proceeds of the wool trade. Fears of a French invasion, combined with the hope of retaining a valuable royal subsidy, led the town to develop Dartmouth Castle, on the west side of the estuary, into an artillery fort after 1486, with another fortification, Kingswear, being constructed the east side from 1491 onwards.

It is uncertain precisely when Bayard's Cove Fort was built: historians suggest that it was either started in 1509–10 at the beginning of Henry VIII's reign, following a royal instruction to the water bailiff of Dartmouth, or in 1529 by the town in response to fears of a French and Spanish attack. The fort was certainly complete by 1537; Thomas Howard, the Earl of Surrey, may have been referring to it in 1522, when he reported the "blockhouse of stone" in Dartmouth, guarding a well defended harbour, and the antiquarian John Leland described it two decades later as forming "a fair bulwark made of late".