Brimstone Hill Fortress

A British fortress on a volcanic hill overlooking the Caribbean, once called the 'Gibraltar of the West Indies'.

It was designed by British military engineers and was built and kept up by enslaved Africans. The hill is 972 feet (about 296 metres) high, which gave the cannon a great view. By 1780 it was seen as impossible to capture and was called the 'Gibraltar of the West Indies'. It became a World Heritage Site in 1999.

Battles for the hill

Cannon were first placed on the hill in 1689, when the French used them to take English Fort Charles. A year later the English, under Sir Christopher Codrington, took it back the same way and then kept the hill as a fortress. In 1782 French forces under Admiral de Grasse besieged it, and after a month the cut-off British garrison surrendered. The Treaty of Paris returned it to Britain in 1783.

From ruin to park

After 1783 the British made the fortress stronger, and it never fell to an enemy again. A French attempt to take it in 1806 failed. The British left in 1853 and the buildings slowly decayed. Restoration began in the early 1900s, and in 1973 Prince Charles reopened the first restored area, the Prince of Wales Bastion. It was declared a national park by law in 1987, and 40 men of a corps of enslaved soldiers once served here with pikes and cutlasses.

On the globe

The model shows a stone fortress on a volcanic hill above the sea. Look for the thick walls stepping up the slope.