Fort Bovisand

Fort Bovisand is one of Plymouth’s least disturbed Palmerston Forts. Located in the South Hams Coastal Conservation Area, its origins go back to Tudor times, and the Fort has remains from both the World Wars and the Cold War. The coastal landscape is also a ‘Site of Special Scientific Interest’ and a natural habitat for local wild and marine life. 

We worked closely with the Fort Bovisand Trust, Historic England and local planners to unlock the potential of the site. The mixed-use residential development will provide 81 homes and save the Scheduled Monument from ruin, making 400 years of history accessible to everyone.

Proposals include the restoration of the distinctive Victorian casemates to provide residential apartments. The World War Two lookout towers that once stood on top of the casemates will be reinstated to provide three maisonettes with panoramic sea views. The Upper Fort will be conserved and adapted to residential use with little intervention. Ancillary buildings will be converted to create a visitors centre and a café.

Designed to Passivhaus standards a new apartment building to the West of the site will recede into the hillside with discrete parking and amenity. Each apartment will have space for a kayak or canoe. Stone and slate cottages are proposed next to the existing hillside dwellings.

Working with the native planting of the coastal site, the landscape scheme includes picnic areas and spaces as part of the layered interpretation of the site, including a learning nature trail, and an amphitheatre on the quayside for exhibitions and events. The link with the South West Coastal Path will be reinstated and the Fort Bovisand Trust hope to enable access by bicycle, bus and ferry to increase the different ways for visitors to reach the site.