Fort Monckton is the largest of the four coastal forts built by
Henry VIII in
1545 to defend the strategically important British naval harbour of
Portsmouth against the
French Navy.
Fort Monckton is a dramatic and atmospheric training base for the British
Secret Intelligence Service,
MI6. Situated on the bleak and windswept southern tip of the
Gosport peninsula, it is approached by a short, winding track across the tee of the first hole of the
Gosport and Stokes Bay golf course.
Officially known as `No.1 Military Training Establishment', the Fort was a training base for the
Royal Engineer Regiment of the army until 1956. When the Royal Engineers no longer needed it,
MI6 discreetly took it over. The takeover was so discreet, in fact, that the
Ministry of Defence supply branch continued to pay for its upkeep, unaware that it no longer belonged to them.
NOTE: It's so hard to find decent information on these secret training bases... This writeup is a semi-cut-and-paste job from Richard Tomlinson's book The Big Breach