Qualla: Kingswear Castle https://qualla.com/kingswear-castle en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:11 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_res/siteimages/rsslogo.png Qualla: Kingswear Castle https://qualla.com/kingswear-castle Kingswear Castle: Introduction https://qualla.com/kingswear-castle/ Stand on the riverside path at Kingswear and look across the narrow throat of the Dart estuary. Two stone towers face each other across roughly 300 yards of tidal water - Dartmouth Castle on the far side, Kingswear Castle on this one. In the 1490s, when Henry VII still ruled England and Columbus had just sailed, the men of Dartmouth built these towers to do something specific that almost no one in Britain had built a fort to do yet: hold gunpowder cannon at sea level and fire them directly at the waterline of any French ship that tried to come up the river. The English had been fighting France for most of a century. The harbour they were protecting was rich. So they built one of the very first purpose-built artillery forts in Britain - and then it sat here, mostly quiet, for the next five hundred years.

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]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/b/v/q/kingswear-castle-wp/gbvq-kingswear-castle-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Kingswear Castle: A Harbour Worth Defending https://qualla.com/kingswear-castle/ Dartmouth's harbour in the 15th century could hold up to 600 vessels. It was one of the great ports of southern England, a base for trade, fishing, and the wine ships that came up from Bordeaux. Wealth attracted enemies. France was always a threat across the Channel, and the town...

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]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/b/v/q/kingswear-castle-wp/gbvq-kingswear-castle-a-harbour-worth-defending.mp3 0:06 2 full Kingswear Castle: A Civil War Cameo https://qualla.com/kingswear-castle/ The castle had its busy moment in the English Civil War. In 1642 Dartmouth and Kingswear took the Parliament side, and the town spent money strengthening Kingswear's doors. A year later Prince Maurice, the Royalist commander, besieged and took Dartmouth, and Kingswear with it. Th...

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]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/b/v/q/kingswear-castle-wp/gbvq-kingswear-castle-a-civil-war-cameo.mp3 0:06 3 full Kingswear Castle: From Ruin to Summer House https://qualla.com/kingswear-castle/ By the early 18th century the range of naval artillery had outgrown the castle. Ships could now stand off and out-shoot anything mounted in a fixed tower at sea level. Kingswear Castle still had 12-pounder, 9-pounder, and 8-pounder guns installed as late as 1717, but its real lif...

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]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/b/v/q/kingswear-castle-wp/gbvq-kingswear-castle-from-ruin-to-summer-house.mp3 0:06 4 full