Fort Scaur

Fort Scaur was built in the 1870s across the narrowest neck of Somerset Island, and its purpose was specific: to stop an enemy landing elsewhere in Bermuda and marching overland to take the Royal Naval Dockyard from behind. It is a dry ditch and rampart system rather than a masonry fort, cut across the island from shore to shore, and the grounds are now a public park with a view over the Great Sound. The neck it crosses is barely a few hundred metres wide, which is why the position was chosen, and the ditch runs the whole way across from one shore to the other.

Highlights

• The dry ditch - the defensive cut running across the island from shore to shore.
• The ramparts - the earth and stone works above the ditch.
• The Great Sound view - the water and islands from the ramparts.
• The parkland - the public grounds the fort now sits in.

When to go

March to November is the most comfortable. The grounds are open and free. Hurricane season runs June to November.

Good to know

There is little standing structure; it is earthworks and ditch. Interpretation is minimal. Facilities amount to a car park.

Nearby

Somerset Village is north, and the Dockyard is beyond it.