Pendennis Castle

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Donjon of Pendennis Castle

Pendennis Castle ( Cornish : Kastel Penndinas ) is a combination of forts (also called Henrician Castle ) on the west bank of the estuary of the River Fal near Falmouth in the English county of Cornwall . Together with St Mawes Castle , their sister castle on the east bank of the estuary, King Henry VIII had this castle built between 1539 and 1545 to guard the entrance to the river and the Carrick Roads at Falmouth against possible French and SpanishDefend attacks. The castle consists of a simple, round tower and a gatehouse , which is enclosed by a low curtain wall. Today it is owned by the state and administered by English Heritage .

construction

Floor plan of the castle

Pendennis Castle was built as one of a chain of forts along the coast of the southern half of Britain from Hull on the east coast to Milford Haven in the west. This building program was in response to the French and Spanish threats to occupy England because Henry VIII had fallen away from the Catholic faith and joined the Protestants in the Reformation . The Pope had asked the Catholic kings of France and Spain to invade England in order to reinstall Catholicism there. The English knew that the French and Spaniards were familiar with the Carrick Roads as a possible anchorage for an invasion because a sea battle had taken place there shortly before and the attackers knew that this strait was largely unprotected. Therefore it seemed to King Heinrich urgently to install defensive positions there.

Occupation from 1646

Map showing the location of Pendennis Castle

Pendennis Castle played an important role in the English Civil War . It was the last royalist position in the southwest and the last royalist castle to fall into the hands of the Roundheads . A royalist garrison withstood a five-month siege (March 1646 - August 17, 1646) by parliamentary troops there before they surrendered with honor. The parliamentarians attacked the castle from land and sea; the royalist garrison of Cornishmen was under the leadership of the 70-year-old John VII Arundell (1576-1654) from Trerice . Pendennis Castle was the third retreat, alongside Raglan Castle and Harlech Castle , where the royalists opposed the parliamentarians. About 1000 men, women and children survived the 155 days of siege in the castle before they had to surrender because of hunger. Before that, the castle served as a sanctuary for Queen Henrietta Maria and the Prince of Wales , later King Charles II, before they fled to France.

List of governors

The first governor appointed by King Henry VIII was John III. Killingrew (died 1567) from Arwenack , Falmouth, whose bream is preserved in Budock Church to this day. The office of governor became practically hereditary in his family for many generations.

Affiliated fortresses

Crab Quay is below Pendennis Castle on the northeast side of the headland. This is a very suitable point for a landing and a battery was built there in the late 17th or early 18th century , which first appears on a map in 1715. Below this battery there are five D-shaped concrete platforms just above the water. These were foundations for searchlights for the Middle Point battery . All of Middle Point's above-ground buildings were removed in the 1960s.

The Little Dennis Blockhouse was built as part of the castle's other fortifications in the 1540s. The log cabin was a D-shaped stone building over the River Fal and the sea. It was demolished in 1654.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Place-names in the Standard Written Form (SWF) . Maga Cornish Language Partnership. ( Memento of the original from May 15, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved June 19, 2015. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.magakernow.org.uk
  2. ^ A b Philip Payton: Cornwall . Alexander Associates, Fowey 1996.
  3. ↑ Castle recreates Civil War strife . BBC News 2006. Retrieved June 19, 2015.
  4. ^ Edwin Dunkin, Hadlow Wise: The Monumental Brasses of Cornwall with Descriptive, Geneaological and Heraldic Notes . 1882. pp. 36-37.
  5. ^ S. Jenkins: Crab Quay Battery . Fortress Study Group . No. 37 (2009). Pp. 3-14.
  6. ↑ Little Dennis Blockhouse . Historic England. Retrieved June 19, 2015.

literature

  • HM Colvin (Editor): (1982). The History of the King's Works . Volume IV: 1485-1600 . Part II. Her Majesty's Stationery Office, London 1982.
  • Plantagenet Somerset Fry: The David & Charles Book of Castles . David & Charles, Newton Abbot 1980. ISBN 0-7153-7976-3
  • Peter Harrington: The Castles of Henry VIII . Osprey, Oxford 2007. ISBN 978-1-84603-130-4
  • S. Jenkins: Pendennis Castle, Cornwall . Fortress Study Group . No. 25 (1997)
  • Richard Linzey: The Castles of Pendennis and St. Mawes . English Heritage, London 1999. ISBN 1-85074-723-7
  • BM Morley: Henry VIII and the Development of Coastal Defense . Her Majesty's Stationery Office, London 1976. ISBN 0-11-670777-1

Web links

Commons : Pendennis Castle  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Coordinates: 50 ° 8 '50 "  N , 5 ° 2' 52"  W.