Pendennis Castle: History for Educational Visitors

8/3/2019 Pendennis Castle: History for Educational Visitors

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BOOKING AND SITE INFORMATION

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Ramparts

Discovery Centre

Tunnel to Half

Moon Battery

Crab Quay Blockhouse

(Little Dennis)

Battery Observation

Post

Half Moon

Battery

Tudor Gun

Tower

Barrack Block and

Education Zones

Gatehouse and

Guardhouse

Entrance

www.english-heritage.org.uk/onlinebooking [email protected] Engine House, Fire Fly Avenue, Swindon, SN2 2EH 0870 333 0606 01793 414926

ALSO AVAILABLETO DOWNLOAD

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HISTORYENGLISH HERITAGE TEACHER’S KIT

Pendennis Castle

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Cor nwall’s greatest fortr ess from Tudors and Stuarts to Victorians and W WII

Spectacular views of the coast and town and the opportunity to study landformsFully equipped education rooms with Discovery Chests of artefacts

Discovery Visits - workshops for Key Stages 1-3 (charge applies)

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stone bridge

guardroom

kitchen

gun room

Upper Gun Room

roof

lookout turret

Governor’s Lodging



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The at the entrance would or iginally have been a wooden drawbr idge.

There is a fine carving of the Tudor royal coat-of-arms above the door . Below this

is an empty r ecess, probably for the governor at the time to display his coat-of-arms.

If you turn left just inside the door you enter a . There is an eighteenth

century cast-iron grate displaying the three cannons of the Board of Ordnance (thebody in charge of forts and cannon and responsible for appointing the governor).

In the basement is a . This contains a cooking hearth and ovens. This area

would have or iginally been divided into a kitchen, cel nd larder. At one time

there would also have been a well here to provide fres in times of siege.

There is also a latrine.

Back on the ground floor, there is an octagonal . It has gunports

(embrasures) on seven of its sides. Originally the windows would have been cir cular

to allow the canon to poke through but they have since been adapted. It is likely

that this gun room would have been used only if the threatened invasion by Spain

and France in the early 1540s had happened before construction of the tower was

completed. The room served as a mess room and barracks for the garrison. The

gunners would have slept in hammocks or on the floor, and eaten their meals here.

Upstairs is the and you can now see a reconstruction of how it

would have been in Tudor times. Ropes and pulleys ena ed the guns to be pulled

back into the firing position once they had recoiled on being fired. The Tudor

builders did try to ventilate each gun port, but even so, the conditions in this room

when the canon were fired must have been similar to th n board a warship of

the time: cramped, noisy, dark and choking. The gunpowder gave off a thick smokethat would have lingered in the room.

Up on the is where the most impor tant gun platform would have been. The

is thought to have been the location from which the great Spanish

Ar mada of 1588 was first spot ted from the mainland. From here you can enjoy the

best views across to St Mawes Castle on the other side of the Fal Estuary and

westwards towards the Lizard.

Going down the steps through the parapet to the north and climbing down the

wider spiral stairs in the tur ret takes you to the .

Tour : The Tudor Gun Tower




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The Gatehouse and Guardhouse

The Discovery Centre

Enemy Sighted

Signal Sent



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The large expanse of open ground in the interior of the castle was not always like

this. From the early days of the for tress there was a succession of houses, barrack

block, stores and general buildings inside the ramparts to serve the garr ison. Many

were temporary structures, made of wood, which have di appeared

without a trace. During the Civil W ar, the area was occupied by a windmill,

houses and gardens, during the Fir st W orld W ar there was a hutted camp and during

the Second the area was covered with prefabricated corrugated iron N issan huts.

There would originally have been a wooden drawbridge over the earthen ramparts

at the entrance. The present gatehouse and guardrooms are late 17th century and

possibly the earliest purpose-built barracks in Britain. The rooms have now been

restored as they would have appeared in the First W or ld War. Ar my rules were

strict and petty offences such as drunkenness or neglect of duties could result in

soldiers spending time locked up in here.

The Discovery Centre contains displays with a military a number of

periods, which will enable pupils to compare one phase of history at Pendennis with

another. The displays are themed to follow three main stages of defence.

is about seeking out and identifying all potential enemies at sea or in

the air. The display shows how sixteenth century lookouts had to rely on their eyes,

but advances in surveillance were made with the invent on of the telescope in the

seventeenth century and binoculars in the nineteenth century. Finally, the display

shows how Radar was one of the greatest breakthroughs of coast defence At first itcould detect aircraft approaching by radio waves, but could not identify friend or foe.

By 1941, this problem was solved and at Pendennis radar was used to locate and

track enemy hips and submarines. Enemy vessels could be spotted by day or night at

a far greater distance than even the best binoculars.

Once the enemy is sighted, defence forces must be aler ted quickly. looks

at communicating information about the enemy to the gun crews. Throughout its

history, Pendennis was part of a wider local and national defence network. This panel

provides an explanation of the different forms of communication at Pendennis

through the ages ranging from fire beacons, flags, semaphore, heliographs, telegraph,

lamp signals, telephone and radio.

Tour : Inside the Fortres

Inside the Guardhouse

Interior view of a cell




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Command Fire

The BatteryObservation Post

The Ramparts

Half Moon Battery

underground

ammunition store (magazine and war shelter

guns



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considers the most effective means to destroy the enemy. The

section covers the history of the guns at Pendennis and the rapid advances in

technology. The displays are designed to allow a hands-on approach using replica

models, which give pupils the oppor tunity of handling jects relevant to the

particular period of history.

This is set up as it would have appeared in W orld W ar Two. It was designed to

be an observation area from which they could observe and monitor shipping

movements in the English Channel.

This information was then used to control the settings on the guns in Half Moon

Battery. The room is painted dark blue to minimise glare.

Henry VIII’s forts had been designed to counter attack from the sea but were

vulnerable to a land siege. Their weakness lay in the ‘dead ground’ created infront of a round tower where a defender could not see an attacker. In the late

sixteenth century, the castle was surrounded by ramparts (earthen-backed walls)

and bastions (projecting angular obstacles).

From One Gun Battery, you can walk through the tunnel in the ramparts to the

Half Moon Battery. The battery has this name because of its semicircular shape.

It was created, together with its twin at St Anthony’s Head, to turn fire power

away from the estuary channel and out to the wider sea. It became Falmouth’s

principal line of defence in World War Two. You can visit the

) with a guide.

The here had a range of about 12 miles. The concrete canopies were built

over the gun positions in 1940 to protect them from aerial attack. Camouflage

nett ing would have further hidden them. On the wall are hooks for the regulation

gas masks, helmets and capes that the gunners had to h th them. The gun

commander received information from the Battery Observ on Post.




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Crab Quay Battery and the Blockhouse (Little Dennis)

Crab Quay Battery

The Blockhouse



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They made corrections for speed, wind

direction and the tide. The greatest

threat came at night, when detection and

accurate firing were more difficult.

Searchlights on Pendennis Point were

therefore coordinated to illuminatepossible targets for the guns.

In 1944, it took 99 people to staff Half

Moon Battery every 24 hours. Of these,

only 36 were gunners and the rest were searchlight operators and staff involved in

position finding and communication tasks.

is the best landing place on the headland.

(Little Dennis) is the earliest Tudor fortification on the Pendennis

Headland. It was almost certainly built in 1538 as a stop-gap measure to put cannon

on until the main castle could be completed.

View of

Little Dennis




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Timeline




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Pendennis Castle is a mixture of fortifications spanni over four hundred years.

W ithin the Elizabethan ramparts is one of Henry VIII’s castles, part of an

internationally impor tant chain of defences built in the 1540s along the south coast in

response to the threat of invasion.

By 1538 Henry VIII’s simultaneous divor ce of Catherine of Aragon and break withthe Pope had placed him in a perilous position. England faced the threat of invasion

from both France and Spain. Protection for the Channel ports became an urgent

necessity. The resulting chain of for ts and blockhouse ected the power and

efficiency of new types of heavy gun, made possible by better casting techniques

perfected in the King’s own foundries. Although the pl ns of individual buildings

varied, all were low and massive, with several levels of guns mounted in

emplacements designed to enable them to command a wide field of fire.

Pendennis Castle was begun in 1540, together with a smaller fort near the water’s

edge called Lit tle Dennis. At first the castle consisted of a round, keep-like guntower with a basement kitchen, but a surrounding earth-filled platform for more

guns was added almost immediately and an entrance block containing a residence for

the governor a few years later. Fifty-six years later, fear of a second Armada led

Queen Elizabeth I to provide a huge outer line of defe astle, with

projecting bastions and stone-faced ramparts designed to absorb cannon shot.

These fortifications were still effective when the castle was besieged by

Parliamentary forces during the Civil War fifty years later. By March 1646 the

Royalists had lost the war and the King was a pr isoner ands of the Scots, but

John ‘Jack-for-the-King’ Arundell held out at Pendennis until starvation forced him to

surrender five months later. Unlike many castles, Pendennis was too important to be‘slighted’ after its capture.

Historical Background

Reconstruction of 17 August

1646—The ‘Honourable’surrender of Royalist troops




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During the next three centuries, Pendennis’ defences were periodically up-graded,

including the installation of new and powerful guns in 1894. In the early twentieth

century a large barrack block was built to house a permanently stationed Regiment

of Royal Garrison Artillery, and as late as the Second W orld W ar, Pendennis’powerful coast artillery guns protected convoys and wa ips assembling or seeking

shelter in the quiet waters of the estuary.

After this, new fighting technology made

Pendennis and all coastal artillery obsolete,

and the army finally left in 1956.

The Barrack Block, part of which houses the Education Z ones to day

The interior of the reconstructed

war shelter. The order ‘stand to’

has interrupted a meal!

Pendennis Castle: History for Educational Visitors

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Transcript of Pendennis Castle: History for Educational Visitors