Upnor Castle

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Upnor Castle on the River Medway

Upnor Castle is an artillery fort in the village Upnor on the west bank of the River Medway in the English administrative county Medway . The fort is diagonally opposite and slightly downriver from Chatham Dockyard , a once important military facility that was designed to protect it along with the Royal Navy ships anchored in the River Medway . The fort was built at the behest of Queen Elizabeth I in the years 1559–1567, a time of tension between England and Spain and other European powers. The castle consists of a two-story main building protected by a curtain wall and towers. A triangular gun platform protrudes into the river. Upnor Castle had a garrison of 80 men and at its best was armed with 20 cannons of various calibers.

Despite their strategic importance, the castle and the defenses on the Thames and Medway Rivers were severely neglected in the 17th century. The Dutch Republic launched an unexpected attack from the sea in June 1667 and the Dutch fleet was able to break through the defensive lines, capture two English warships, set fire to others and anchor in the river at Chatham. It was one of the worst defeats the Royal Navy has ever suffered. Upnor Castle fared better than the other defenses up the river, although it was poorly stocked. Gunfire from the fort and the nearby gun platforms forced the Dutch fleet to retreat after a few days before they managed to set the shipyard on fire themselves.

The attack revealed the weakness of the defenses on the Medway River and resulted in the abandonment of Upnor Castle as an artillery fort. New and stronger forts were built further downstream in the next two centuries, e.g. B. the massive casemate forts Garrison Point Fort , Fort Hoo and Fort Darnet . Upnor Castle became a Navy ammunition depot, where large quantities of gunpowder, ammunition, and cannons were stored to equip ships that came to Chatham for repair or remunition. It remained in military use until 1945. The castle was then opened to the public and is now managed by English Heritage .

history

Strategic context

Map of the forts on the Thames and River Medway

The River Medway is a major tributary of the Thames that flows into an estuary about 60 kilometers east of London . Its upper course from Rochester to the confluence with the Thames at Sheerness meanders about 16 kilometers between sand and silt banks. The water flows slowly with no strong currents and the river is free of rocks; the surrounding hills offer shelter from southwest winds. The characteristics made the stretch of river below the Rochester Bridge a preferred anchorage for large ships as they could be safely anchored and repaired there. Difficulties in navigating the river also gave advantages in defense.

During the reign of Henry VIII , the upper reaches of the River Medway gradually became the most important anchorage for the ships of the Royal Navy, as far as they were not operational ("in ordiniary") or decommissioned. Their sails and rigging were taken down in this condition and the opportunity was taken to repair or refit them. Warehouses and service facilities have been set up in Gillingham and Chatham, both towns on the River Medway. This later became the Chatham Dockyard. When Elizabeth I came to the English throne in 1588, most of the royal fleet used this stretch of the River Medway, called Chatham and Gillingham Reaches , as an anchorage.

Although the Thames has been protected from sea attack since the time of Henry VIII, when five log cabins were built there as part of the Device Fort coastal defense chain , there was no equivalent on the River Medway. Two medieval castles - Rochester Castle and Queenborough Castle - existed on the south bank of the river, but both were designed to ward off attacks from land and so were of little use in defense against warships. There was an urgent need for proper defenses for the vulnerable ships and facilities on the banks of the upper reaches of the River Medway.

construction

Upnor Castle was commissioned by Queen Elizabeth I and her Council of State in 1559. Six “impartial people” chose a site across from the mouth of St Mary's Creek at Chatham, 1.5 acres of land owned by Thomas Devinisshe of Frindbury . It was acquired by the Crown - possibly expropriated - for the sum of £ 25. Military engineer Sir Richard Lee was given the task of designing the new fortress, but it appears that he was then busy working on the defenses of Berwick-upon-Tweed was busy, and so the project was carried out by other engineers according to his plans. His assistant, Humphrey Locke, took on the role of construction supervisor, surveyor and master builder, while Richard Watts , the former mayor of Rochester and buyer for the Royal Navy, oversaw the project as construction manager and took care of the bookkeeping.

The original appearance of the castle differed significantly from its current appearance. The arrow-shaped water bastion facing the river and the main block behind it were already there at that time. There were also towers on both sides of the river-side facade, but these were later replaced by towers of other types. The gatehouse and the moat are later additions. A number of ruined buildings at Rochester Castle, Aylesford and Bopley were demolished to make building blocks for the new castle. Most of the construction work was completed by 1564, but it took another three years and additional investment to complete the project. A total of £ 4,349 was used.

Improvements and repairs

Towards the end of the 16th century, tensions between Protestant England and Catholic Spain grew, which ultimately led to the undeclared Anglo-Spanish War of 1585-1604 . Spain was able to attack the south of England from a strong position in their possessions in the Spanish Netherlands . New fortifications were built along the River Medway, e.g. B. a chain stretched across the river below Upnor Castle. The castle itself was only sparsely manned until Lord High Admiral Charles Howard, 1st Earl of Nottingham , pointed this out and demanded that the garrison be reinforced. In 1596 the castle was occupied with a garrison of 80 men, each with a daily wage of 8 per cent. (around £ 6 today).

Ongoing fears of a Spanish raid led to the fortifications of the castle being reinforced in the years 1599–1601 following the proposals of Sir John Leveson . An arrow-shaped wooden palisade was erected in front of the water bastion to prevent any kind of deliberate landing there. A ditch 5.5 meters deep and 9.8 meters wide was dug around the castle on the land side. Flanking towers were built to protect the bastion on the site of today's north and south towers . The bastion itself was raised and a high parapet was attached to its upper edge. A gatehouse and drawbridge were built to protect the land side of the castle.

A report from 1603 showed that Upnor Castle was equipped with 20 cannons of different caliber and an additional 11 cannons were distributed over two entrenchments or outworks, Bay Sconce and Warham Sconce . The guns of the castle consisted of a small cannon, 7 field snakes , 5 small field snakes, a minion , a falconet , a saker and 4 veuglaires with two chambers each. The Bay Sconce was equipped with 4 small field snakes, while 2 field snakes and 5 small field snakes were stationed on the Warham Sconce . Twenty years later there were reports of 18 guns at the castle. The garrison was armed with 34 longbows , a sign that archery was still of military value in the early 17th century. At that time the castle was already in disrepair. The drawbridge and its lifting mechanism were broken, the gun platforms were in dire need of repairs and the courtyard wall had collapsed. A new curtain wall had to be built to protect the land side of the castle. It was reported that the foundations of the Warham Sconce had been washed away by the flood , and it appears that both entrenchments were left to decay.

When the English Civil War broke out in 1642, Upnor Castle fell into the hands of the parliamentarians without a fight and was later used to intern royalist officers. In 1648 a royalist uprising took place in Kent and Essex , in the course of which the royalists captured a number of cities, including Gravesend , Rochester, Dover and Maidstone . The royalists were defeated at the Battle of Maidstone on June 1st and Upnor Castle fell back to the parliamentarians. The parliamentary commander-in-chief Sir Thomas Fairfax inspected the castle and ordered further repairs and reinforcement of the gun platforms. It appears that this time the gatehouse was also enlarged, and today's north and south towers were built. It appears that these were left open at the back (facing the land), but this was corrected in 1653 with further repairs so that they could serve as accommodation for the troops.

Robbery at the Medway

A painting of the attack by Willem Schellincks . The view goes north. On the left you can see Upnor Castle silhouetted against the flames, on the opposite bank of the river the burning shipyard of Chatham. To the north of this is shown the conflagration near the chain and on the horizon the still smoking ruins of Sheerness Fort.

The castle was used only once in its history, during the Dutch raid on the Medway in June 1667, part of the second Anglo-Dutch War . The Dutch bombarded the town of Sheerness , captured it, sailed up the Thames to Gravesend and then up the River Medway to Chatham. They overcame the chain that was supposed to block the river, sailed past the castle, set off the ships HMS Royal Charles and HMS Unity and set fire to other ships at anchor. The Dutch anchored in the River Medway overnight on June 12, while the Duke of Albemarle seized the defenses and ordered the urgent construction of eight gun platforms near Upnor Castle, using guns from Chatham. The castle's cannons, the garrison's muskets, and the new batteries were all used to bombard the Dutch ships as they tried again to sail past Upnor Castle to Chatham. The Dutch were able to set fire to a few more ships at anchor but could not advance further and eventually had to retreat. The result of the raid has been described as "the worst defeat at sea England has ever suffered".

The castle had proven itself in the eyes of contemporary observers, although it could not prevent the raid, and the dedication of its garrison was praised. The pro-government London Gazette reported that “They [the Dutch] were so well 'entertained' by Major Scot, who was in command there [at Upnor Castle], and, on the other hand, by Sir Edward Spragg of the battery on the bank that after the great damage they had caused by the smashing of their ships, the sinking of several of their longboats that were manned by them, the great number of deaths and a few captures, the military historian Norman Longmate observed bitterly: “King Charles II ministers were unmatched in presenting bad facts in the most rosy light .” Samuel Pepys , Secretary of the Navy Board , got closer to the truth when he noted in his diary that the castle garrison was poorly supplied: “I see not that Upnor Castle was in any way damaged by them, although they fought for a long time; and they shot themselves until they hardly had a gun left on the mounts, they were so poorly equipped ”.

Use as a magazine and marine facility

Exhibition of powder kegs and cannons in the magazine block

Upnor Castle was previously neglected, but the Dutch attack caused the government to order that it be maintained "as a fort and a place of strength". Eventually, the attack marked the end of the castle's career as a fortress. New and stronger forts were built lower down the Medway River and on the Isle of Grain with the aim of deterring enemies from reaching Chatham; so the castle became superfluous. It was converted into a "place for warehouses and powder magazines" in 1668 and served the new purpose of supplying ammunition to warships anchored in the Medway River and in the Swale . Cannons, gun mounts and gunpowder were stored in large quantities in the main building of the castle; it had to be topped up and its floors reinforced to support the extra weight. In 1691 Upnor Castle was the leading magazine with 164 cast iron cannons, 62 fixed mounts, 100 ship mounts, 7125 pieces of cannon balls, over 200 muskets of various types, 77 spears and 5206 barrels of gunpowder. This was significantly more than was stored in the next smaller store, the Tower of London .

View of Upnor Castle from the Medway River (1845)

In 1811 a new magazine block was built a little further downstream from the castle and thus took pressure off the castle. It was not until 1827 that Upnor Castle was no longer used as a storage magazine and was converted into an ammunition laboratory, especially for filling grenades with gunpowder. More storage space was needed and so six hulks were anchored on the bank and used as floating magazines. They stayed there even after another magazine was built on the bank in 1857. These storage problems were only solved when another five large magazines, guarded by barracks, were built further inland at '' Chattenden ''; they were connected to Upnor Castle by a narrow-gauge railway with 7600 mm gauge, suitable for operation with steam locomotives. In 1891 the castle and its adjoining depot and full control of the Admiralty was put, ending the arrangement that the War Ministry operated the facility and the Admiralty paid for the costs.

After World War I it became a Royal Naval Armament Depot (RNAD), one of a series of such facilities across the country. For some time the castle and magazine served as a test facility for trying out firearms and grenades.

Since the 1920s, the castle has remained in the property of the military, but has increasingly become a museum. During World War II , the castle was still in service as part of the storage facility and was damaged by two enemy bombs in 1941. The bombing caused plaster to flake off in the south tower and in the gatehouse, under which old graffiti was discovered, e.g. B. the drawing of a ship from around 1700.

today

In 1945, after the end of the war, the Admiralty granted permission to use Upnor Castle as a publicly accessible department museum. It was then renovated. The castle has been a Scheduled Monument since January 1960 and is now managed by English Heritage. It still belongs to the Crown Estate .

description

Upnor Castle floor plan

Upnor Castle's buildings were constructed from blocks of a combination of Kentish ragstone and stone , complemented by red brick and wood. The main building is a rectangular two-story block with a footprint of 41 meters by 21 meters, oriented in a northeast-southwest direction, on the west bank of the Medway River. It was later called the magazine and has been rebuilt several times since its construction. It presumably contained limited accommodation for soldiers, possibly on a small upper floor behind the gun platforms on the roof. When the building was converted into a warehouse in 1668, many changes were made that obscured the original building concept. The upper floor seems to have been extended to the entire length of the building, where the gun platforms used to be on the roof. This created more storage space inside. The ground floor was divided into three separate rooms and provided with a floor made of wooden blocks and copper-clad doors to reduce the risk of flying sparks. Further storage rooms were accommodated on the upper floor; a winch made it possible to pull material up on the waterside.

A spiral staircase inside the building gives access to the main gun platform of the castle or water bastion, a low, triangular structure that juts out into the river. The main armament of the castle was mounted here in the open; this is shown today by the six cannons from the mid-19th century that are still on their original mounts. There are nine loopholes in the bastion, six pointing downstream and three pointing upstream. A rounded parapet is designed to deflect hits. The water bastion was additionally protected by a wooden palisade, which follows the triangular floor plan a few meters out into the river. The current palisade is a modern version of the original facility.

A pair of towers stands on the river bank a little further away and on either side of the main building. They were originally two-story towers open at the back with gun platforms on the ground floor, from where flanking fire could be given along the line of the moat on the perimeter of the castle. They were later converted into accommodations for the soldiers, with their backs closed with bricks and the towers raised by one story. Traces of the loopholes can still be seen today where the roof line used to be. The south tower is said to have been reserved for the governor of the castle, even if the low level of luxury there meant that later governors no longer lived there. The two towers are connected to the main building by a crenellated curtain wall, where further guns were placed behind two loopholes on the northern curtain wall and one on the southern curtain wall.

The most important buildings of the castle are arranged on the east side of a rectangular courtyard in which there are two large oaks . They are said to have been pulled from acorns brought from the Crimea after the Crimean War . A stone curtain wall with a brick top surrounds the courtyard. It is about 1 meter thick and 4 meters high. The courtyard is accessed from the northwest through a four-story gatehouse with loopholes for additional defense. It was rebuilt from scratch in the 1650s after being badly damaged by fire in 1653. Traces of this fire can still be seen today in the form of blackened stones in the walls of the first floor. A gate passage in the middle with a round arch leads into the passage to the castle courtyard. Above the passage is a late 18th century clock that was inserted into the original structure. A wooden belfry was added in the early 19th century and a modern flagpole stands on top of the building.

The curtain wall is surrounded by a dry trench, which was originally almost 10 meters wide and 5.5 meters deep, but has been partially backfilled to this day. Visitors to the castle used to cross the drawbridge to the gatehouse, but it no longer exists. A side entrance to the castle is a side gate in the north wall. On the inside of the curtain wall, brick foundations of buildings can be seen. These buildings originally leaned against the curtain wall; they were built in the 17th century to store supplies for the garrison.

  • South side of the curtain wall

  • North side of the curtain wall

  • Water bastion with main building and north tower

  • West side of the castle with gatehouse

  • Magazine, south tower and inner courtyard from the gatehouse

Other associated buildings

To the west of the castle, Upnor Castle House was built in the middle of the 17th century to house the storekeeper, the officer in charge of the warehouse. The house, which was expanded in the 18th century, is now a private home.

The barracks within the surrounding wall

To the southwest of the castle, not far from it, there is a barracks block and associated storage buildings, which were built soon after 1718. The block that replaced the original barracks buildings in the castle when the castle was converted into a warehouse has changed little in appearance over the past 300 years. It is a rare example of such an 18th century building that has survived to this day, one of the first proper barracks to be built in England.

Storage buildings that used to be connected to the castle have been preserved in the area immediately northeast of the castle to this day. The oldest of these is a powder magazine from 1857. Its design is similar to that of the magazine from 1810, which was formerly attached to its south side but was demolished in the 1960s. A total of 33,000 powder kegs could be stored in these two buildings. A shifting house (to examine the powder) was built between the magazines and the castle in 1811 . Both this and the adjoining shell dump from 1857 were demolished in 1964. They were built on earlier gun platforms, of which one can still see earthworks in the form of a wide wall that runs from the castle in a north-easterly direction to the depot. Another four grenade dumps were built along with other ammunition dumps further north; some of these are still preserved today. This storage facility was used by the Ministry of Defense until 2014, after which the site was approved as building site. The remaining military buildings were converted into commercial buildings.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ English Heritage, AD Saunders: Upnor Castle: Kent . English Heritage. January 1, 1985. Retrieved November 3, 2016.
  2. ^ A b c English Heritage, AD Saunders: Upnor Castle: Kent . English Heritage. January 1, 1985. Retrieved November 3, 2016.
  3. ^ Susan Reynolds: Before Eminent Domain: Toward a History of Expropriation of Land for the Common Good . Univ of North Carolina Press. March 1, 2010. Retrieved November 4, 2016.
  4. ^ English Heritage, AD Saunders: Upnor Castle: Kent . English Heritage. January 1, 1985. Retrieved November 3, 2016.
  5. ^ English Heritage, AD Saunders: Upnor Castle: Kent . English Heritage. January 1, 1985. Retrieved November 3, 2016.
  6. ^ English Heritage, AD Saunders: Upnor Castle: Kent . English Heritage. January 1, 1985. Retrieved November 3, 2016.
  7. ^ English Heritage, AD Saunders: Upnor Castle: Kent . English Heritage. January 1, 1985. Retrieved November 3, 2016.
  8. ^ A b c English Heritage, AD Saunders: Upnor Castle: Kent . English Heritage. January 1, 1985. Retrieved November 3, 2016.
  9. ^ Philip George Rogers: The Dutch in the Medway . Oxford University Press. 1970. Retrieved November 4, 2016.
  10. ^ A b c d e English Heritage, AD Saunders: Upnor Castle: Kent . English Heritage. January 1, 1985. Retrieved November 3, 2016.
  11. ^ Francis Vere: Salt in Their Blood: The Lives of Famous Dutch Admirals . Cassell. 1955. Retrieved November 4, 2016.
  12. ^ The London Gazette . 13-17 June 1667. No. 165. p. 2.
  13. ↑ Norman Longmate: Island Fortress: The Defense of Great Britain 1606-1945 . Random House. September 30, 2011. Retrieved November 4, 2016.
  14. ^ English Heritage, AD Saunders: Upnor Castle: Kent . English Heritage. January 1, 1985. Retrieved November 3, 2016.
  15. ^ A b c d English Heritage, AD Saunders: Upnor Castle: Kent . English Heritage. January 1, 1985. Retrieved November 3, 2016.
  16. ^ David Evans: Arming the Fleet: The Development of the Royal Ordnance Yards 1770-1945 . Gosport, Hants. Explosion! Museum (together with English Heritage).
  17. ↑ a b c B. H. St. J. O'Neill, S. Evans: Upnor Castle in Archaeologia Cantiana . No. 65 (1952). Pp. 1-11.
  18. ↑ a b c d e f g h Artillery Castle at Upnor . Historic England. English Heritage. Retrieved November 7, 2016.
  19. ^ A b English Heritage, AD Saunders: Upnor Castle: Kent . English Heritage. January 1, 1985. Retrieved November 3, 2016.
  20. ^ English Heritage, AD Saunders: Upnor Castle: Kent . English Heritage. January 1, 1985. Retrieved November 3, 2016.
  21. ^ English Heritage, AD Saunders: Upnor Castle: Kent . English Heritage. January 1, 1985. Retrieved November 3, 2016.
  22. ^ A b c English Heritage, AD Saunders: Upnor Castle: Kent . English Heritage. January 1, 1985. Retrieved November 3, 2016.
  23. ^ English Heritage, AD Saunders: Upnor Castle: Kent . English Heritage. January 1, 1985. Retrieved November 3, 2016.
  24. ^ Upnor Conservation Area Appraisal 2004 . Archived from the original on December 27, 2012. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved November 8, 2016. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.medway.gov.uk
  25. ^ English Heritage, AD Saunders: Upnor Castle: Kent . English Heritage. January 1, 1985. Retrieved November 3, 2016.
  26. ↑ Building LU001 (former B-Magazine), Upnor Depot . Historic England. English Heritage. Retrieved November 8, 2016.
  27. ^ Traverse to Former Shifting House, Lower Upnor Ordnance Depot . Historic England. English Heritage. Retrieved November 8, 2016.
  28. ^ Lower Upnor Depot . Retrieved November 8, 2016.

Web links

Commons : Upnor Castle  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Coordinates: 51 ° 24 ′ 24.9 ″  N , 0 ° 31 ′ 37.6 ″  E