St Catherine's Castle

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The castle from the 16th century

St Catherine's Castle is a former coastal fortification in the county of Cornwall in Great Britain . The ruin, classified as a Grade II * cultural monument, is located on a headland on the west bank of the mouth of the River Fowey in the English Channel .

history

In the Middle Ages there was a Chapel of St. Catherine on the headland, which served as a landmark and a lighthouse. In the 1530s, the small fortress was built on the site of the chapel on the initiative of Thomas Treffry , a citizen from Fowey , to protect the port entrance of Fowey. It replaced the older Fowey Blockhouse , which, together with the Polruan Blockhouse on the east bank, was able to block the harbor entrance with a chain. St Catherine's Castle served as a coastal defense until the beginning of the 17th century and during the English Civil War from 1642 to 1646. After that, the complex fell into disrepair, and in 1684 it was described as dilapidated. In 1855 a coastal battery with two guns was set up on the ledge below the fortress . The battery's original armament consisted of two 32-pounders, which were replaced by two 64-pounder muzzle-loading guns in 1889. These guns were already out of date by the end of the 19th century. The fortification was abandoned and the guns dismantled. During the Second World War in 1940 a QF 4.7-inch naval gun Mk I-IV was placed on one of the old gun emplacements to protect the harbor entrance , and a pillbox was erected next to it . A second gun was erected on the headland further to the west. In the further course of the war, the fortification was supplemented by a French 75 mm gun. After the end of the war, the guns and the pillbox were dismantled in November 1945.

The ruin, now looked after by English Heritage , is accessible via a footpath and is freely accessible.

The remains of the Fowey Battery from the 19th century

investment

The small fort consists of a two-story, D-shaped gun turret and a semicircular perimeter wall. On the ground floor of the tower, which has walls up to 1.35 m thick, there was a gun battery that could fire from a total of five loopholes. The upper floor served as an observation post and has narrow windows. Two walls with rifle loopholes adjoin the tower, the north-eastern wall has a small bastion, next to which is the entrance to the fort. Both walls border steeply sloping cliffs and thus enclose a semicircle at the end of the headland. Compared to the nearby Pendennis and St Mawes Castle , which belong to King Henry VIII's coastal fortification program, which began a little later, the small fortification looks primitive. It had no accommodation for a crew, and it was probably never permanently provided with a garrison.

The 19th century Fowey Battery consisted of two guns that were placed on concrete beds behind two semicircular parapets. An ammunition magazine was broken into the rock behind the battery, and another magazine was built in the ruins of the tower from the 16th century.

Web links

Commons : St Catherine's Castle  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ British listed Buildings: St Catherine's Castle, Fowey. Retrieved July 11, 2014 .
  2. ↑ http://www.fowey.co.uk/activities-and-attractions/places-of-interest. Retrieved January 15, 2016 .

Coordinates: 50 ° 19 ′ 41.6 ″  N , 4 ° 38 ′ 40 ″  W.