Fortress Study Group honours historian and FSG founder Victor Smith

At the launch of his latest book, historian Victor Smith was awarded an Honorary Fellowship of the Fortress Study Group (the FSG) by FSG Chair David Clarke.

Making the presentation David said, “Victor richly deserves this recognition by the Fortress Study Group as we mark our half century. In 1975 he formed the Kent Defence Research Group and later in the same year he was one of the founders of the FSG. As I will outline, he has made an outstanding personal contribution to the education of the public in the study of artillery fortifications which is the core purpose of the FSG.

This contribution has included a huge amount of research, over 100 papers, a number of books including Defending London’s River and Front-Line Kent and a leading role in numerous archaeological investigation and fortification restoration projects.

Locally these have included projects for the restoration and public access to Coalhouse Fort, New Tavern Fort, the Gravesend Blockhouse and Gravesend’s Cold War bunker. 

He has advised on fortifications all around the UK including Brean Down Fort, Reigate Fort and Bodiam Castle and Tilbury Fort. Until 2011, he acted as coordinator for the 20th century Defence of Kent Project. 

He was Chief Executive of the Brimstone Hill Fortress National Park in St. Kitts contributing to the successful application for the site to be granted UNESCO World Heritage status. This led to providing advice on the restoration of forts and military sites throughout the Caribbean as well as in Bermuda and Gibraltar. 

His prodigious output continues. Today we are celebrating the launch of his latest book. His current projects include updated studies of the defences of the Thames in general and Tilbury Fort in particular as well as researching a Cold War bunker at Northfleet.

Throughout he has been a stalwart member of the Fortress Study Group and contributed much to raising the profile of both the group and the study of fortifications.

It is therefore my great pleasure today to award Victor the Fellowship of the Fortress Study Group in recognition of this substantial body of work in the study of artillery fortifications.”

Victor Smith said "I thank FSG Chair David Clarke and the Fortress Study Group for their most gracious award of Fellowship.  

It was 50 years ago that I found myself inside a room at Pembroke College, Oxford, to attend a meeting to set up an organisation to study, promote and safeguard post-medieval and gunpowder era fortifications. This became the FSG. As a fresh-faced youth I wondered how I had been admitted – there was a Brigadier, a Major General, the Chief Inspector of Ancient Monuments and sundry others I recognised, including from the museum or academic world.

From a tentative start, the FSG has advanced through the decades to achieve a true and recognised international reach, well in the hundreds of members across the world.  It has created a worldwide community of interest, information sharing and discussion to the very highest academic standards of participation, but open to everyone.  There has been an astonishing rise in knowledge, understanding and promotion of fortification studies through publication, information sharing, conferences and visits to an extent that we could only have dreamt of at Oxford.

Sadly, the other participants in the room have since departed this life.  Somehow, I have survived, of course, still fresh-faced as ever and I shall be continuing to support the FSG for some years to come."

The event at London River House in Gravesend was to launch his book on the Romano-British religious centre and settlement at Springhead, Kent for which he was Assistant Director of the excavation.