Qualla: Dartmouth Castle

Dartmouth Castle: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Author Sabine Baring-Gould, Public domain. On the night the chain was raised, the entrance to Dartmouth harbour ceased to be navigable. Small boats called "cobbellys" stretched the heavy iron chain across the narrow estuary mouth from a tower on the west bank to one on the east, supported on the surface and ready to foul the rudder of anything trying to push through. The west-bank tower was Dartmouth Castle, finished in 1495 after Henry VII agreed to pay one hundred and fifty pounds over five years for its construction plus an annual subsidy for upkeep. The east-bank tower was Kingswear. Together they made Dartmouth's natural funnel into a closed door, and the gun tower at Dartmouth is now reckoned the oldest known purpose-built coast artillery fort in Britain.

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Image: Author Sabine Baring-Gould | Public domain

Dartmouth Castle: A Fort Designed for Gunpowder

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Michael Dibb, CC BY-SA 2.0. Dartmouth had wanted a real fort for decades. The crisis that finally produced one was a financial deal. The town agreed to develop the existing castle into a proper artillery position in return for a royal subsidy of thirty pounds a year, later raised to forty. The new gun tower...

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Image: Michael Dibb | CC BY-SA 2.0

Dartmouth Castle: Tudor Upgrades and Carew's Coup

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Matt Buck from London, United Kingdom, CC BY-SA 2.0. In 1543, Henry VIII allied with Spain against France, and when the Spanish made a separate peace the following year England suddenly faced a French invasion with no ally and a hostile Scotland on its northern border. The king ordered the south coast defences improved. Dartmouth C...

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Image: Matt Buck from London, United Kingdom | CC BY-SA 2.0

Dartmouth Castle: Civil War from the Hill Behind

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Derek Harper, CC BY-SA 2.0. The Civil War exposed the castle's weak point. Dartmouth initially sided with Parliament in 1642, and the castle was guarded by just five men. In 1643, Prince Maurice besieged the town for the Royalists and discovered that he could shell the castle from the higher ground at its b...

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Image: Derek Harper | CC BY-SA 2.0

Dartmouth Castle: Victorian Granite and Wartime Guns

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Roger Cornfoot, CC BY-SA 2.0. By 1820 the castle had two serviceable guns. In 1847 the writer Clarkson Stanfield observed it was "not spacious, and mounts but a few guns." Two technological revolutions changed that. The arrival of shell guns and steamships in the 1840s, followed by rifled cannon and iron-clad...

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Image: Roger Cornfoot | CC BY-SA 2.0

Dartmouth Castle: The Castle Today

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nilfanion, CC BY-SA 3.0. In 1955 the castle was transferred back to the Ministry of Works and repaired. The Dartmouth Point Battery, by now generally known as the Old Battery, was leased back to the town for use as a restaurant; the site reopened to the public; a 19th-century tower behind the battery tha...

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Image: Nilfanion | CC BY-SA 3.0