Queenborough Castle

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Queensborough Castle , also Sheppey Castle , is an Outbound fortress town Queensborough , about 3 km south of Sheerness on the Isle of Sheppey in the English county of Kent . This is where The Swale joins the River Medway just before it joins the Thames estuary .

The fortress was built from 1361 to 1377, during the Hundred Years War with France , at the behest of King Edward III. built to monitor shipping traffic along The Swale from there .

Their construction, which was unusual at the time - round and symmetrical - was described by the historians Howard Colvin and R. Allen Brown as "an example of the principles of a cylindrical and concentric fortress, executed as a logical conclusion with perfect symmetry". They also argued that this construction, the similarities to the much later incurred Device Forts King Henry VIII. Has the 16th century, for the best possible defense against the enemy's gunpowder - Artillery and the best possible utilization of the possibilities of their own artillery made. Queenborough Castle was the only truly concentric fortress in England. It regained importance in the 16th century under Sir Thomas Cheney when it is believed to have influenced the construction of the nearby fortresses Deal Castle and Walmer Castle .

The fortress, which protected the estuaries of The Swale and River Medway for 300 years , was never intended to serve as a garrison and has no military history. When it was captured by the parliamentarians in 1650 after the English Civil War and was classified as unsuitable for repair and "of no practical value", it was demolished in the interregnum .

Channel 4 excavations were carried out at Queenborough Castle in 2005 as part of Channel 4's archeology television program Time Team .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Samuel Lewis: A Topographical Dictionary of England . 1848. pp. 623-627.
  2. ^ HM Colvin, R. Allen Brown: The History of the King's Works . Volume II: The Middle Ages . Chapter: The Royal Castles 1066–1485 . Her Majesty's Stationery Office, London 1963. p. 783.
  3. ^ HM Colvin, R. Allen Brown: The History of the King's Works . Volume II: The Middle Ages . Chapter: The Royal Castles 1066–1485 . Her Majesty's Stationery Office, London 1963. p. 801.
  4. ^ John Rickard: The castle community: the personnel if English and Welsh castles: 1272–1422 . 1st edition. Boydell, Woodbridge 2002. ISBN 978-0-851159-13-3 . P. 21.
  5. ^ Queenborough Kent . Channel 4. March 12, 2006. Retrieved February 10, 2010.

Coordinates: 51 ° 25 ′ 5.9 ″  N , 0 ° 44 ′ 42 ″  E