Coach and minibus hire to Newhaven Fort
With coach hire to Newhaven Fort from JRP Direct, your group travels in one vehicle to the largest work of defence ever built in Sussex, on the cliffs overlooking Seaford Bay. Our minibuses and coaches are based at Buttons Farm in Cross in Hand, near Heathfield, and JRP Direct has been a family-run operator with a modern fleet since 2019. Newhaven Fort suits history clubs, schools, community groups and families, and a visit takes in its Victorian and wartime story, its exhibitions and its group and school terms.
The story of Newhaven Fort
There have been defences on the cliffs overlooking Seaford Bay since the Iron Age. The fort that stands today was started in 1862, following the threat of invasion by Napoleon III, and was the vision of a young Royal Engineers officer, Lieutenant John Charles Ardagh. It went on to play a significant part in both the First and Second World Wars as part of the network of defences protecting the English coast.
Lieutenant Ardagh’s Victorian fort
The History of the Fort exhibition tells the story of how and why the fort was built, with a model of the site where visitors can listen to Lieutenant Ardagh describe his designs and defences. In the Life in the Fort casemate, a Victorian barrack room, uniforms and musical instruments show what daily life was like for the soldiers stationed here.
The Grand Magazine was built to hold the fort’s stores of gunpowder, and today it houses the Hidden Fort film, which takes visitors into parts of the fort they cannot usually see. From the Parade Ground, steps lead down through the cliff to the Caponier, one of the fort’s first lines of defence, whose name comes from the French word for a chicken coop.