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Article: The lolly lost on a folly; answers to correspondants.(Letter to the Editor)
- Article from:
- Daily Mail (London)
- Article date:
- February 9, 2001
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2001 Solo Syndication Limited. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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QUESTION
What are 'Palmerston's follies' on the south coast?
IN THE 1850s, political opinion in Britain considered the expansionist tendencies of Louis Napoleon's Second Empire France a threat to our security.
In 1859, Prime Minister Lord Palmerston set up a Royal Commission on British defences and agreed to build several forts and batteries around Plymouth, whose dockyard was second in importance only to Portsmouth.
The building of Plymouth's lines of defence started in 1862. The North-Eastern Defences alone, protecting against attack from overland, consisted of seven forts, three batteries and a keep, the most important of which was ...