Fort Blockhouse is the final version of a complicated site. A blockhouse was first built on the Gosport side of Portsmouth harbour in 1495, with 5 guns. Henry VIII ordered it replaced with an 8 gun battery as part of his Device Forts in 1539. This had probably vanished by 1667 when Bernard de Gomme installed a 21 gun battery for Charles II. But in 1708 the fort was rebuilt on an irregular trace. Upgrading was done at the turn of the 19th century, and again in 1845, from which time most remains date. The site was considered obsolete by the 1859 Royal Commission on the Defence of the United Kingdom, and it was turned over to the Royal Navy, where as HMS Dolphin, it has been the home of the submarine service for years.
The site is open for tours in September as part of the Heritage Open Days scheme.
The fort was built by the British Army and Canadian militia troops in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, to defend the settlement and the new capital of the Upper Canada region from the threat of a military attack, principally from the newly independent United States.
The rebuilt fort was sufficient to repel a further attempted invasion in 1814.
Fort York was used as a military establishment until 1880, and again during the First and Second World Wars.
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