Blog | The History Of Drakes Island

The Addition of the Centre and Eastern Artillery Batteries in 1901

The upgrading of the coastal defences continued with the building of the Centre Battery of three gun emplacements to...

These next set of plans cover the period from 1898 to World War 1. The defences up to this point had all been Rifle...

The next set of surveys done by the Royal Engineers was in 1895 overseen by Lt Col Francis Mascall who was the...

A few more fascinating documents to explore that have recently come to light. It’s the 1881 Barrack Plan for the...

I came across two old charts dating back to at least 1600 and possibly slightly earlier of the first fortifications on...

Apr 28, 2021 | Uncategorized

I have been looking through a whole bunch of Island records that we have recently obtained. They are photo’s of...

This final set of memories from the Adventure Centre days is again provided by Martin Dunning and I am very grateful...

This week is another bunch of memories from 1979 to 1981 from Martin Dunning who was a climbing instructor at the...

Both Ken Corish and Martin Dunning started work on the Island in 1979 as instructors, Ken as an Assistant Marine...

President John Frederick Kennedy (JFK as he was more usually known) of the USA was assassinated in 1961. The year...

Carrying on from last week here are some memories, this time of some of the instructors and staff. The Island...

The first groups to stay on the Island were the Casemateers. These were local youth clubs who rented out one of the...