Fortifications

To protect the capital at Richmond, the Confederate Government leased enslaved workers from local plantations to build fortifications throughout the local area. Most were constructed to the north and east, but five fortifications and gun batteries numbered thirteen through seventeen were built on the south side of the James. One of them was about two miles south of Hull Street, near the modern-day intersection of Route One and Bellemeade Road. A Union army map dated 1864 gives the name ‘Fort Macgruder’ to this particular fortification. No trace of it remains today. The Confederacy also established a prisoner of war camp for Union enlisted soldiers on the nearby Belle Isle.

To prevent escapes and revolts, armed guard posts were built along the south side of the James near Semmes Avenue, to keep watch on the prisoners as well as to fire on them if necessary. There was also an ammunition magazine and four gun battery in the Spring Hill neighborhood built on the former site of a mansion known to locals in the antebellum area as the ‘Haunted House.’ Nothing of either the mansion or the battery and magazine survives at the site.