Westenhanger Castle

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Westenhanger Castle.

Westenhanger Castle is a fortified manor house near the station of Westenhanger and the stand of the racecourse of Folkestone in the English county of Kent . The house, which once belonged to the royal family, has almost fallen into ruin in recent years, but the current owner has launched a program to preserve and restore the house and adjacent buildings. It now serves as a conference center and is rented out to wedding parties. English Heritage has listed the house as a Grade I Historic Building.

history

In its best days, Westenhanger Castle was a fortified 14th century mansion that reflected the wealth of its then owner. But its story began almost 1000 years ago, in 1035, when the estate belonged to King Canute the Great .

In 1343, the De Criol family built the first permanent house on the site. This house stayed in the family until the Wars of the Roses ; then Sir Thomas de Criol (or Kyriell ) was beheaded the day after the Second Battle of St Albans on the orders of Queen Margaret of Anjou . Sir Thomas de Criol had no male offspring and so Westenhanger Castle fell to his son-in-law, Sir John Fogge . The manor house then had 126 rooms.

Westenhanger Castle has a rich history of royal and noble owners; it was related to King Henry II , Rosamund Clifford , Edward Poynings , King Henry VIII , Queen Elizabeth I , Thomas Smythe and Percy Smythe, 6th Viscount Strangford .

In 1588, when the house belonged to Thomas Smythe, Queen Elizabeth I used it as the command center for the 14,000-strong Kent Army, which was supposed to defend the English south coast against the Spanish Armada .

In 1656, Charles II, who had fled abroad, was persuaded to return to England and was supposed to stay in Westenhanger Castle, which was ideally located on the English coast. Thousands of armed men hid in the surrounding, open woods on orders and, when the king entered the house, they should be informed, storm into the house and murder the king and his followers. But the king was warned before leaving France.

today

Over the centuries, the manor house has been reduced in size and increasingly neglected. Since the mid-1990s, the current owners have worked with English Heritage to refurbish the stonework and prevent further deterioration of the mansion, walls and adjoining buildings. The impressive medieval barns, which, still intact, stand outside the curtain wall, were recently merged with the mansion under one owner and work is currently being carried out to restore them to near original condition. English Heritage has listed the house as a Grade I Historic Building.

The house is now rented out for conferences and wedding parties. You can get there through the racecourse entrance, next to the west hanger section of Stone Street .

Colonization of America

A replica of the Westenhanger Castle is now home to a replica of the Discovery , one of three ships that entered Chesapeake Bay on May 13, 1607, can be found in Westenhanger Castle . Sir Thomas Smythe , the initiator of the expedition, was the son of Thomas 'Customer' Smythe , who was given a fiefdom to the Westenhanger Castle (or Ostenhanger Castle , as it was then called) as a reward for his service as a collector of the Queen's imports. The younger Thomas commissioned the East India Company to build the Discovery in 1600 and then the ship sailed to the Colony of Virginia on December 19, 1606 along with its sister ships Susan Constant and Godspeed under the command of Captain John Smith . May of the following year arrived.

As a result of this expedition, the first permanent English-speaking settlement in the New World was established in Jamestown, Virginia , and formed the basis for what would later become the United States of America .

On December 19, 2008, the replica of the Discovery was installed in Westenhanger Castle by the Jamestown UK Foundation , a non-profit organization established to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown in 1607.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ AJ Pearman: History of Ashford . H. Igglesden. 1868. Retrieved November 25, 2016.
  2. ^ Roy Ingleton: Fortress Kent: The Guardian of England . Pen & Sword Military. 2012. Retrieved November 25, 2016.
  3. ↑ Westenhanger Castle . Pastscape. Historic England. English Heritage. Retrieved November 28, 2016.

swell

  • Roy Ingleton: Fortress Kent: The Guardian of England . Pen & Sword Military. 2012. Retrieved November 25, 2016.
  • AJ Pearman: History of Ashford . H. Igglesden. 1868. Retrieved November 25, 2016.
  • Thomas Smythe, of Westenhanger, Commonly Called Customer Smythe in Archaeologica Cantiana . Issue 17 (1887). Pp. 193-208.

Web links

Coordinates: 51 ° 5 ′ 40 ″  N , 1 ° 1 ′ 53 ″  E