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Knockalla Fort is one of several Napoleonic batteries built along the shores of Lough Swilly in county Donegal, to defend the north west of Ireland. It was part of a scheme to fortify Lough Swilly and Lough Foyle against French Invasion during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars and was completed between 1812 and 1813. On the other side of the Lough is Fort Dunree. The fort was built on the site of a temporary fortification first built in 1798.
It is triangular in shape with a tower on the landward salient angle. From the tower, the two walls of the fort, protected by a dry moat partly cut into the rock, lead down to the edge of steep rocky cliffs, where there are batteries on two levels. The lower battery with seven gun emplacements, originally mounted French 42 Pounder smooth bore guns on traversing platforms. The upper level contains barrack accommodation, magazine, casemates, entrance gateway and an upper battery for two 24 Pounder smooth bore guns on the northern flank of this level. The tower is quadrant-shaped in plan with corners rounded off and was armed with a 24 Pounder gun and a 5.5-inch howitzer.
After the end of the Napoleonic Wars the defences were neglected and not updated. By the 1860s the Fort was armed with an 18 Pounder gun and 5.5-inch howitzer in the tower. The upper battery had a 24 pounder gun. By this time the Fort was obsolete and was disarmed and abandoned by the military in the 1870s.
The fort remains substantially intact, and is now in use as a private residence.
References:Saint-Georges de Boscherville Abbey is a former Benedictine abbey. It was founded in about 1113 by Guillaume de Tancarville on the site of an earlier establishment of secular canons and settled by monks from the Abbey of Saint-Evroul. The abbey church made of Caumont stone was erected from 1113 to 1140. The Norman builders aimed to have very well-lit naves and they did this by means of tall, large windows, initially made possible by a wooden ceiling, which prevented uplift, although this was replaced by a Gothic vault in the 13th century. The chapter room was built after the abbey church and dates from the last quarter of the 12th century.
The arrival of the Maurist monks in 1659, after the disasters of the Wars of Religion, helped to get the abbey back on a firmer spiritual, architectural and economic footing. They erected a large monastic building one wing of which fitted tightly around the chapter house (which was otherwise left as it was).