HMS Cambridge

An important defence site, Wembury Point has had a colourful military past, with the headland in continuous military use since 1911.

In 1940 a gunnery range known as the Cambridge Gunnery School was opened for the army and naval use.

In 1956 it was commissioned as an independent shore establishment under the name HMS Cambridge, the Royal Navy’s chief gunnery training school, named after a 1666 Man-o’-War ship belonging to King Charles II. This was exactly a century after the commissioning of the first HMS Cambridge – a second-rate vessel built in 1815 – as ‘the gunnery ship at Plymouth’, used for training naval ratings in the use of guns.

In 2001, HMS Cambridge finally closed, and The National Trust bought the land in 2006, with the help of 30,000 individual donations, working to reinstate a natural landscape with uninterrupted coastal views. All disused buildings were demolished by 2008, the roads were landscaped and fences were removed. You can still see some legacy of the 9 hole golf course greens from The Skelligs