Fort William

Fort William is a British trading fort at Anomabo (also spelled Anomabu) in the Mfantsiman Municipal District of Ghana's Central Region, roughly 15–16 km east of Cape Coast. Originally known as Fort Anomabo, it was renamed Fort William in the 1830s by its then-commander, Brodie Cruickshank, after King William IV. It stands on what the Ghana Museums and Monuments Board describes as an eroded shelf of hard rock close to a sandy beach indentation with a sheltered anchorage.

The British Parliament voted funds for the fort in 1753, after a French attempt to fortify the same site was thwarted. It was designed by engineer John Apperly, who became its first governor; after his death in 1756, Richard Brew continued the work. Completion is dated to 1757, though some sources say 1759 or 1760. Two earlier structures stood on or near the site: a Dutch lodge of the 1640s and the English Fort Charles of 1672/1674, abandoned and destroyed in the early eighteenth century. The fort is almost square with bastions at each corner, built almost entirely of local materials, with a second storey added in the nineteenth century.

Fort William was the centre of British slave trading on the Gold Coast until abolition in 1807, and the GMMB notes that nowhere else does the original structure of a fort include a large prison specifically built to hold enslaved Africans awaiting transport overseas. It was attacked by the French in 1794 and besieged by Asante forces on 15 June 1806, capitulating the following day. Later uses included a rest house, a post office and a state prison; the GMMB gives the prison's end as 2001, while other sources say 1957–2005.

The fort is a National Monument under N.L.C.D. 387 of 1969 and E.I. 29 of 1973, and forms part of the UNESCO World Heritage property "Forts and Castles, Volta, Greater Accra, Central and Western Regions," inscribed in 1979. It is in the custody of the Ghana Museums and Monuments Board, which states it now serves Anomabo as a community library; other sources describe it as a museum.

GMMB lists opening hours of 9:00am to 4:30pm, with no days-of-week or seasonal variation given, and an entrance-fee table reviewed in February 2013 — visitors should confirm current arrangements. A 2023 GhanaWeb report described the fort as operational but dilapidated, with some rooms where enslaved people were held destroyed and the bookshop's documents scattered and damaged, and a former caretaker noting it received little attention compared with Cape Coast and Elmina Castles. Its condition is therefore disputed and uncertain.