St Andrew's Castle

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The remains of St Andrew's Castle at high tide

St Andrew's Castle is the ruin of an artillery fort near the village of Hamble-le-Rice in the English county of Hampshire . King Henry VIII had this Device Fort built in 1542 and 1543 as part of his fortification program to protect the English coasts against a feared invasion by the French and Spanish . St Andrew's Castle was supposed to help defend Southampton Water near the Solent . It consisted of a donjon and a gun platform, protected by a moat . In 1642, during the English Civil War , it was decommissioned and has since been largely destroyed by coastal erosion .

history

St Andrew's Castle, like the other Device Forts, was built in response to political tensions between England, on the one hand, and the Kingdom of France and the Holy Roman Empire, on the other, during the final years of Henry VIII's reign.

William Paulet, an early captain of the fort

The fort was built to protect Southampton Water, an inlet that connects the Solent with the important port of Southampton . It was on the coast in what is now Hamble Common , south of the village of Hamble-le-Rice . It was at one end of an old Iron Age moat - the area was inhabited during that time and a hill fort called Hamble Common Camp was built on a coastal headland. The artillery fort was built in 1542 and 1543, but it may not have been fully completed when King Henry died in 1547.

The fort had a stone donjon with a square plan and a semicircular gun platform on the lake side. The ensemble was protected by a 25 meter wide ditch and a wooden breakwater . St Andrew's Castle was similar in construction to the contemporary West Cowes Castle . A 1559 report mentions that the fort was heavily armed; the artillery consisted of two cast iron field snakes , a small cast iron field snake, two cast iron sackers , two cast iron bases , a cast iron falcon , a cast iron falconet and a quarter sling . The lighter guns were probably placed on the roof of the donjon, the two heavy guns below and the rest on the outer gun platform. The fort also had handguns, bows and arrows, and handguns for close-range defense.

William Paulet , who later became the Marquess of Winchester , was appointed host and captain of the fort in 1547. He received an annual salary of £ 19 for this position. His garrison consisted of a chief gunner, a porter and six soldiers. Paulet also controlled Netley Castle further down the coast. In 1559 the garrison decreased slightly; it then consisted only of a captain, two gunners and four soldiers.

In 1623 the fort was still in use, but in 1642, during the English Civil War, it was decommissioned by parliamentary troops . The area of ​​the fort was badly affected by coastal erosion; the coastline at this point retreated 0.5 meters per year in the 1990s. Today, in the 21st century, only a few parts of the masonry and earthworks of the original fort can be seen. The remains of the fort and the surrounding park are considered a Scheduled Monument .

Remarks

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i St Andrew's Castle . Pastscape. Historic England. English Heritage. Retrieved October 12, 2016.
  2. ^ Extract from English Heritage's Record of Scheduled Monuments . DEFRA. Retrieved October 12, 2016.
  3. ↑ a b c d e J. R. Kenyon: An Aspect of the 1559 Survey of the Isle of Wight: The State of all the Quenes maties Fortresses and Castelles in Post-Medieval Archeology . Issue 13 (1979). P. 75.
  4. ^ A b c d Andrew Saunders: Fortress Britain: Artillery Fortifications in the British Isles and Ireland . Beaufort, Liphook 1989. ISBN 1-855120-00-3 . P. 50.
  5. ↑ a b Margaret Scard: Tudor Survivor: The Life and Times of William Paulet Courtier . The History Press, Stroud 2014. ISBN 978-0-752469-25-6 . P. 130.
  6. ↑ It is difficult to compare modern costs and prices with those of the early modern period. £ 19 from 1547 can be worth anywhere from £ 9,900 to £ 4m in 2014, depending on the scale mam uses. As a benchmark, however, the total royal expenditure for all device forts throughout England between 1539 and 1547 was £ 376,500. B. St Mawes Castle alone was £ 5018 and Sandgate Castle was £ 5584.
  7. ↑ Martin Biddle , Jonathan Hiller, Ian Scott, Anthony Streeten: Henry VIII's Coastal Artillery Fort at Camber Castle, Rye, East Sussex: An Archaeological, Structural and Historical Investigation . Oxbow Books, Oxford 2001. ISBN 0-904220-23-0 . P. 12.
  8. ↑ Lawrence H. Officer, Samuel H. Williamson: Five Ways to Compute the Relative Value of a UK Pound Amount, 1270 to Present . MeasuringWorth. 2014. Retrieved October 12, 2016.
  9. ↑ a b J. PG Spurgeon, J. Brooke, CA Fleming (editors): Topographical Writers in South-West England . Thomas Telford Publishing, London 1996. ISBN 978-0-859894-24-1 . Chapter: Use of the Contingent Evaluation Method to Quantify Some Aspects of the Environmental Effects of Coastal Defense Schemes . P. 122.

Coordinates: 50 ° 51 ′ 8.6 "  N , 1 ° 18 ′ 59.8"  W.