Near Torquay, in Devon, Compton Castle presents a striking sixteenth-century fortified façade — portcullises, arrow-slits, curtain walls. But its major interest is human: it is the house of the Gilberts, and notably of Sir Humphrey Gilbert, the navigator who took possession of Newfoundland for England, half-brother of Sir Walter Raleigh.
A Tudor fortress façade
The original manor goes back to the mid-fourteenth century, but it was around 1520 that John Gilbert added to it its spectacular fortified façade — portcullises, arrow-slits, crenellated curtain walls. This Tudor fortification, at a time when the realm's internal peace was however secure enough, was more a matter of the assertion of status and of protection against coastal raids than of any real military necessity. Compton thus illustrates the persistence of the defensive language in gentry architecture, even when its warlike function was declining.
The Gilberts and the conquest of Newfoundland
Compton is above all the house of Sir Humphrey Gilbert (1539-1583), one of the great navigators of the Elizabethan age. In 1583, Gilbert formally took possession of Newfoundland in the queen's name — a founding act of the English colonial empire in North America. He perished the same year in the wreck of his ship, the Squirrel, saying, it is said, to his companions: 'We are as near to heaven by sea as by land.' His half-brother, Sir Walter Raleigh, carried on the colonial adventure. Compton keeps the memory of those Devon mariners who launched England onto the oceans. To see: the great hall (with a model of the Squirrel), the medieval kitchen, the fifteenth-century solar with its stair, the portcullises, arrow-slits and curtain walls.
Did you know?
A local legend, never proven, has it that Walter Raleigh smoked the first pipe of tobacco in Britain during a visit to his half-brother Gilbert, at Compton. True or not, this tradition well expresses the role of this Devon family in the opening of the New World: it was through these mariners that tobacco, the potato and the American dream entered England.
Notes
Compton Castle lies at Marldon, near Torquay, Devon; a National Trust property, open to visits on a limited basis. Seasonal hours to check.
Quiz
- Which navigator lived at Compton?
- Sir Humphrey Gilbert
- Francis Drake
- John Cabot
- Of which territory did Gilbert take possession in 1583?
- Newfoundland
- Virginia
- French Canada
- What was his link with Walter Raleigh?
- They were half-brothers
- They were enemies
- No link