Qualla: Rufus Castle

Rufus Castle: Introduction

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Alex McGregor, CC BY-SA 2.0. Three miles offshore lies the Shambles - a sandbank that for centuries reached up through the swell and broke wooden ships in half. Rufus Castle has watched that sandbank since at least the 15th century, perched on a pinnacle of rock above Church Ope Cove on the eastern flank of Portland. From its gun-pocked walls, you can see the spot where on 5 February 1805 the East Indiaman Earl of Abergavenny struck and went down with 263 souls aboard, including her captain John Wordsworth - whose brother William, the poet, would never quite recover from the loss. Look further out to sea and you are looking at the open water where, in 1653, Robert Blake fought Maarten Tromp through three days of cannon smoke at the Battle of Portland.

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Image: Alex McGregor | CC BY-SA 2.0

Rufus Castle: Whose Castle?

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CC BY-SA 3.0. The name has confused people for two centuries. Rufus suggests William II - William the Red, son of the Conqueror - and the castle was reportedly built for him. The romantic version held since the late 18th century. Modern historians offer an alternative candidate: Gilbert de Cla...

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Image: CC BY-SA 3.0

Rufus Castle: Bow and Arrow

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CC BY-SA 3.0. The castle has two names, and they catch the awkward moment when castle design changed forever. The pentagonal tower carries five embrasures cut through walls more than two metres thick - circular gun ports for early cannon, not the narrow slits an archer would use. Late medieval...

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Image: CC BY-SA 3.0

Rufus Castle: John Penn's Folly Garden

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jo and Steve Turner, CC BY-SA 2.0. Between 1797 and 1800, the politician and writer John Penn built Pennsylvania Castle next door, a Gothic Revival mansion overlooking Church Ope Cove. Penn's estate took in the medieval ruin and the older parish church of St Andrew's that lay below, and Penn went to work making th...

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Image: Jo and Steve Turner | CC BY-SA 2.0

Rufus Castle: The Painters Came

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Artefax, CC BY-SA 4.0. J.M.W. Turner painted Rufus Castle around 1811, and in a rare hesitation drew the arch twice on the same sheet - the upper version giving the ruin more drama than the actual stone offered. His watercolour now lives in the Victoria Gallery and Museum at the University of Liverpool...

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Image: Artefax | CC BY-SA 4.0

Rufus Castle: The View From the Walls

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jim Champion, CC BY-SA 2.0. Stand on the path beside the castle and the geometry of this corner of Portland clicks into focus. Below you, the green of Church Ope Cove cuts a wedge into the limestone. Beyond it, the lower ruin of St Andrew's church - parishioners had to abandon it in the 18th century because...

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Image: Jim Champion | CC BY-SA 2.0