The purpose and design of the fortress is that of a panic room – a refuge for plantation bosses, merchants, and their families. Small enough to be survived with a sweep of spyglass, yet large enough to support sugar plantations, St. Kitts was settled in the seventeenth century by English and French entrepreneurs. Photo by: Traci L.A.

Brimstone Hill Fortress’s vantage, design, and materials contributed to its success. It crowns a hill 213 m above sea level, and the topography allows successive defensive levels. Building materials were on site; blocks hewn from the volcanic core and powdered limestone crust were used to build 2 m defensive walls on a 16.2 ha site with fifty-plus structures, featuring a hospital, infantry quarters, a defensive redoubt, and a bastion with cannons pointing out over Caribbean Sea. Photo by: Traci L.A.

Huge cisterns allowed the fort to store 400,000 liters of water. By the nineteenth century, absentee plantation owners, a shift of colonial interests to Africa and India, slave emancipation, and hurricanes finished the fortress without a shoot fired or a wall breached. The abandoned structures inevitably decayed over time, but restoration got underway in the 1900s. Photo by: Mika_I

Photo by: kristenmarie82