santoshgad

The north-west corner of the Phaltan taluka, about 12 miles south-west of Phaltan, the taluka headquarters! The fort is now easily approachable throughout the year as the Public Works Department has recently constructed a pucca road from village Tathavade lying at the foot of the hill. The fort is roughly triangular in shape. The hill on which it stands is a little lower than the main range. The apices of the triangle are north-west and south-east making it nearly equilateral. At the foot on the northern side lays the village of tathavade with people nearly all cultivators mostly Ramoshis and Marathas.

The defences consist of three walls, the top wall going all round the hill and forming what may be called the citadel. It surmounts a perpendicular scarp of black rock about thirty feet high, and is itself about fifteen feet higher. In thickness it is twenty feet and had originally a parapet about six feet high and three feet thick, all of which has broken down.

The sides of the south-west out-work are not more than thirty yards long but it is perhaps the most solid of the three; the sides of the north-east outwork are about fifty yards, and those of the north-west out-work about seventy yards long. The first two out-works communicated with the citadel by a small door not more than two feet wide built through the walls, which led on to the steps cut in the scarp. The citadel wall has a gap at the north-west angle which formed the communication with the north-west out-work.

The fort remained in the hands of the Marathas till 1818 when it was shelled by a detachment of General Pritzler’s army from the plateau and a spur pointed out about half a mile to the west. A good many of the buildings and part of the walls are said to have been injured by the shelling. The commandant fled at the first few shots, the garrison followed, and the fort was taken. Its elaborate design and considerable strength for the times in which it was built may be explained by the fact that it was close to the Nizam Shahi frontier and of some importance therefore to the Bijapur government, while the constant disturbances in the neighbourhood in Chhatrapati Shivajis time would amply account for any additions he made to it.