At the mouth of the Fal estuary, at Falmouth, Pendennis Castle watches over one of the greatest natural anchorages in the world, Carrick Roads, with its counterpart St Mawes. An artillery fort of Henry VIII enlarged under Elizabeth I, it shows in a single place the whole evolution of fortification in the age of gunpowder.
Henry VIII's keep
Pendennis was born of Henry VIII's Device programme: a first blockhouse (Little Dennis) was built in 1539, then the main castle — a circular keep with a gun platform — from 1540 to 1542. Placed on its promontory, it guarded, with St Mawes facing it, the entrance to the Fal estuary by crossed fire. The first captain, John Killigrew, belonged to the family that owned the land — the office of governor of a fort being often entrusted to the local gentry.
The Italian ramparts against Spain
It was the Spanish threat of the late Elizabethan reign that gave Pendennis its present dimension. In 1597, a Spanish fleet tried to attack Cornwall (it failed because of bad weather). Shaken, the Crown had the old keep girdled, between 1597 and 1600, with vast angular ramparts with Italian-style bastions — the most modern fortification in Europe, designed by the engineer Paul Ivey, after inspection of the site by men such as Walter Raleigh and Ferdinando Gorges. Pendennis thus passed from Henry VIII's compact fort to the Elizabethan bastioned fortress, spanning half a century of progress in the military art. To see: the sixteenth-century circular keep with its gun platform, the Elizabethan bastioned ramparts, the Little Dennis blockhouse (1539), the tiered batteries.
Did you know?
In the early 1600s, the garrison of Pendennis is said to have waited two years for its pay: reduced to misery, the fort's soldiers were, it is said, driven to gather limpets on the foreshore to keep from starving. To guard one of the most strategic places in the realm did not guarantee being paid — the prosaic underside of Elizabethan military greatness.
Notes
Pendennis Castle lies at Falmouth, Cornwall; a fort run by English Heritage, open to visits. Seasonal hours to check.
Quiz
- With which fort did Pendennis guard the Fal estuary?
- St Mawes, facing it
- Portland
- Dover
- What was added to Pendennis around 1597-1600?
- Italian-style bastioned ramparts
- A gilded dome
- A theatre
- Which engineer designed these ramparts?
- Paul Ivey
- Robert Smythson
- Inigo Jones