Brimstone Hill Fortress National Park
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How it came to be
Brimstone Hill is a steep, double-peaked volcanic hill rising 230 m on St Christopher, or St Kitts, the first island in the West Indies colonised by Europeans and long contested by France and England. Its military use began in 1690, when the British mounted cannon on it to drive out the French.
The fortress grew over the following century, designed by the British and built by enslaved Africans from dressed basalt quarried on the slopes. Fort George, the Citadel on one of the twin peaks, was completed towards the end of the 1700s and is the earliest surviving example of the polygonal system of fortress design.
On 11 January 1782 French forces laid siege, and after about a month the cut-off British garrison surrendered. The Treaty of Paris of 1783 returned the island to Britain. The British abandoned the fortress in 1853. Restoration has gone on since 1965, the site became a national park in 1987 and was inscribed in 1999.
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