Inbuilt obsolescence – Winchelsea Castle

For centuries, our coast was in the front line for attacks from the French and, at some times, also the Spanish. The first defensive building on the site of Winchelsea Castle was probably constructed in about 1486-87, by the King’s Master of the Ordnance, Sir Richard Guldeford. In return for the work, King Henry VII gave Sir Richard the Manor of Higham. However, there is no evidence to show that Sir Richard kept his side of the bargain. Henry VII didn’t spend much money on defending his coastal borders, resulting in many castles falling into disrepair.

Usually, coastal defence was left to local landowners and communities, but during the 16th century the threat was so severe that The Crown was obliged to take the lead. King Henry VIII issued a Device, an order, for the building of coastal defences between Essex and Pembrokeshire, between 1539 – 47. These ranged from small forts and earthworks to large castles. The cost was enormous, about £376,000 – probably nearly £200 million now. The money for this work came from the monasteries that had been dissolved by Henry’s orders a few years earlier. Then, he had acquired about £1,500,000, worth almost £650,000,000.

Between Rye and Winchelsea is an example of a so-called Device Fort, built by that order of King Henry VIII. Now called Camber Castle, its original name was Winchelsea Castle. It was originally built between 1512 – 14, as just a small, circular gun tower, intended to protect Rye Harbour and the Camber Anchorage. The builder was Edward Guldeford, son of Sir Richard, with the cost of £1,309 being spread over two years. It was 30 feet high and sat on Kevill Point, a spit of shingle between Rye and the Camber Anchorage. Being so small and primitive it is unlikely to have housed a permanent garrison. The odd thing about it, built as a gun tower, is that it didn’t have any guns until 1536, when iron Serpentines were sent out on the order of Lord Chancellor Thomas Wolsey.

As the threat of invasion by France increased, in 1539 the King was obliged to have another think about how to protect his realm. As part of that rethink, Stefan von Haschenperg, an engineer from Moravia, was commissioned to extend and rebuild Winchelsea Castle. He was well paid, earning £75 a year, (worth about £32,000 now.) The work turned the tower into what is called a concentric castle, based on Italian military architecture, with interlocking arcs and circles. This was fine for defence, as it gave the castle a low and rounded profile, together with the ability to house heavy cannon. The flaw, however, was that the cannon couldn’t easily be aimed at enemy shipping as some of the angles of fire were blocked by the entrance. The circular towers caused dead ground around the castle, which its guns couldn’t be aimed into. Inside, the design was complex, which caused difficulties in navigating around. In January 1544, a local man, Philip Chute, who was one of the king’s commissioners for the work, was created Keeper and Captain of Camber and Keeper of the Waters of the Camber and Puddle, paid the handsome rate of two shillings a day. Ten whole pence in modern coinage and now worth nearly £50. Poor von Haschenperg was removed from his role in the same year, after facing complaints that he was, ‘a man who will pretend more knowledge that he hath indeed.’

The extended castle and its problems failed to please King Henry. It wasn’t what he was expecting, and the design was different to the other defences that had been commissioned elsewhere. The result was that between 1542 – 43, much more money was spent on improving the design, £5,660. In total, £10,000 was spent putting right von Haschenperg’s mistakes. The ruins of what we see now were the result of that expenditure. There was a circular keep, four circular bastion towers and a circular entrance tower. The building was stone, which was sourced from the demolished monastic buildings at Winchelsea. Wood came from Appledore and Udimore, chalk to make lime came from Dover and 16,000 bricks were bought, just to build kilns for the manufacture of another 500,000 bricks on site. Iron and clay tiles came from local suppliers. Also sourced locally was a 10 tonne crane. The rebuilt castle was smaller than before, but designed in such a way that it was more spacious and easier to use. It was equipped with 28 cannon of brass and iron, manned by a garrison of 28 plus Captain Chute. The brass guns were safer than iron ones, which had a tendency to burst, and could be fired up to eight times in an hour. An iron cannon could perhaps fire four to six times an hour. The armoury included 140 longbows and about 14,000 arrows, along with polearms, weapons on long handles, used for close quarters fighting. The castle may have seen action once, in 1545, when French ships attacked Seaford.

Shortly after completion, the castle was obsolete. The Camber had begun to silt up, which meant that it was no longer a viable anchorage. A complaint was made to parliament, and in 1573, the people of Rye said that the Camber was beyond recovery. By about 1700 reclamation of the marshes and ballast dumped by passing ships, together with the natural action of silting meant that the Camber could no longer safely be used. In addition, following peace with France in 1558, our stretch of coast was no longer considered the front line. The threat was now focused on Spain, which meant that the southwest coast was a far more likely area for attack. Add to that changing military design, such as the star fort, so-called because of its shape, which offered a much wider range of fire possibilities, the fact that the castle was no longer on the coast because of reclamation and silting and the economic decline of Rye and Winchelsea, and it can be seen that the area was no longer of much strategic importance.

Despite all the issues, Camber/Winchelsea Castle was still kept garrisoned, but it was difficult to keep in good repair. A report dated 1568 said that the gun platforms were, ‘in utter ruin and decay.’ Repairs were estimated to cost £60 and there is no documentary evidence to show that they were undertaken. In 1584, in response to the ongoing threats from Spain, Queen Elizabeth I authorised repairs costing £171. There were real fears of a Spanish invasion, culminating in 1588 and the Spanish Armada, just one of four armadas sent by Spain up until 1601. A Spanish spy, Roger Walton, and a Jesuit priest named Father Darbysher, plotted together to take over the castle and let any invaders use it to help subjugate the area. A renewed threat in 1593 meant that the castle was rearmed with new, smaller iron cannons, with the brass guns taken for use onboard ships. By the following year, another royal survey showed that nearly £100 needed to be spent on repairing Camber.

Despite its limited usefulness, Camber was still garrisoned into the 17th century. Peter Temples was promoted to Captain in 1610, and between then and 1614 the garrison was only 14, with four of them being trained gunners. Two of the outer towers were filled in to make them into gun platforms between 1613 – 15, and at the southern corner the Rampire, an earthwork, was constructed. The reduced garrison made the reuse of those towers possible. At the same time the old longbows were withdrawn from service, with 46 muskets and arquebuses entering the armoury in 1614. There was a high turnover of captains during this time, with Sir John Temple appointed in 1615 and Robert Bacon in 1618.

In 1623 King Charles I was advised that the place was too dilapidated to use and should be closed down. His Majesty was also told that it was no longer useful as a coastal defence fort, the coast being some two miles away. The locals fought against losing their local defence, but in 1626 The King ordered it to be abandoned and demolished. The Captain, Thomas Porter, and the artillery, left in 1637. The castle was not demolished.

In 1642 the first Civil War started, between supporters of The King and of Parliament. Rye stood with Parliament, which told the people of Rye to remove and remaining munition and stores from Camber, to be kept safely in the town. Fearful that Royal supporters could take Camber over, Parliament had the lead taken off the roof, demolished the barracks and the gunports blocked. The Royal supporters would no doubt have taken the castle over had that not happened, as they took over other coastal forts during the second Civil War, which began in 1648.

When King Charles II was restored to his throne in 1660, a survey of royal fortifications was undertaken. This found that Camber was a ruin. During the following two centuries, public interest in the picturesque increased and led to tourism. Camber became a popular tourist attraction, with picnics often being enjoyed by the northeast corner in particular. In 1785, Francis Grose, a well-known antiquary and writer of dictionaries, wrote about Camber that its decline was due to silting up of the local waterways and the way in which the Royal Navy was now so proficient at protecting our coastline. He clearly wasn’t impressed by what he saw, concluding that it ‘clearly shew the low state of military architecture.’

From 1803 we were once again at war with our old enemy, France, and its Emperor Napoleon. In 1804, Lieutenant Colonel John Brown made a survey of Camber, to investigate the possibility of converting the round, central keep into a Martello tower. Although it was deemed unsuitable, the outer defences were improved, just in case of invasion. Between 1805 – 7, whilst the improvements were being made, the great J M W Turner featured Camber in some oil paintings and sketches.

By about 1900 the castle had a private owner. A plan was suggested in 1931, to restore it as the clubhouse for a golf course. That came to nothing. The first archaeological dig was carried out in 1935, with the results published in 1937. It once again was given a military purpose during the Second World War, when it became an early warning radar site. Outside the walls, decoys were set up, to confuse German bombers and keep them away from Rye. Military training was given at the castle and trenches dug. After the war, the government funded more long-term research into Device Forts, with Camber written up by the distinguished archaeologist Martin Biddle, following an extensive dig. Helpers included children from Rye schools and inmates from the Dover Borstal. Because of its importance as an almost unchanged Device Fort, the government took ownership of Camber in 1967 and began a restoration and research programme. The owners sold to the government in 1977, with English Heritage taking over management in 1984.

Image Credits: Barbara van Cleve [CC BY-SA 4.0] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Camber_Castle_from_the_air.jpg Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en, Barry Yates .