How to read a Tudor gun fort
A few clues help you see how a Tudor gun fort worked.
This site is about history and about how to read a Tudor gun fort. It gives no travel advice: we do not give opening times, entry, parking, paths or access, because they change. Check with whoever looks after a site before you go.
What to look for
- Most of Henry’s artillery forts, built from 1539 onwards, had a central tower surrounded by rounded bastions. English Heritage: History of Yarmouth Castle
- The circular shape and several tiers let the guns fire outwards all the way round. English Heritage: Local Learning, Pendennis and St Mawes Castles
- Deal Castle had guns in five tiers. English Heritage: History of Deal Castle
- At St Mawes you can see an arrow and gun slit, called a “loop”, in the wall. English Heritage: History of St Mawes Castle
- A dark, narrow passage called the “Rounds” runs all the way round the castle. English Heritage: Deal Castle
- A Latin carving at St Mawes says Henry VIII had the castle built in the 34th year of his reign. English Heritage: History of St Mawes Castle
- An angle bastion is usually shaped like an arrowhead with four straight sides. English Heritage: History of Yarmouth Castle
- Its two faces fire at the enemy, and its two flanks fire along the walls. English Heritage: History of Yarmouth Castle
Which survive best?
Examples survive at Pendennis and St Mawes in Cornwall, Portland in Dorset, Hurst and Calshot in Hampshire, Camber in Sussex, and Deal and Walmer in Kent. English Heritage: Tudors: War
English Heritage calls St Mawes perhaps the best surviving example of a Henrician artillery fort. English Heritage: History of St Mawes Castle Few Henrician artillery forts are as complete as St Mawes. English Heritage: History of St Mawes Castle
English Heritage calls Hurst among the best preserved of Henry VIII’s castles. English Heritage: Significance of Hurst Castle Camber Castle is an unusually unaltered artillery fort built to guard the port of Rye. English Heritage: Camber Castle
Forts that changed later
By 1600 the engineer Paul Ive had wrapped Henry’s castle inside a much bigger fortress. English Heritage: History of Pendennis Castle The old Tudor parapets were taken down and replaced with decorative battlements. English Heritage: History of Deal Castle
Hurst is one of very few of Henry’s castles to have been updated again and again, so it stayed in military use into the mid-1900s. English Heritage: Significance of Hurst Castle Hurst is unusual in having two lighthouses inside its walls. English Heritage: Significance of Hurst Castle
Sandown Castle has now largely vanished. English Heritage: History of Deal Castle
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