Pendennis Castle

En un regard

Le château en bref

Perched on the headland that closes off the southern side of the Carrick Roads anchorage, Pendennis Castle has watched over the entrance to the Fal estuary for nearly five centuries, facing its twin at St Mawes on the opposite shore. The fort was born in the early 1540s, when Henry VIII studded the English coast with artillery works to ward off an invasion by the Catholic powers. Its heart is still a round granite tower, encircled by a polygonal curtain wall and approached by a bridge across the ditch. At the end of Elizabeth I's reign, fear of a Spanish landing transformed this compact fort into a vast bastioned fortress enclosing the entire headland. It was this enclosure that, in 1646, allowed around a thousand Royalists to hold out for five months against the Parliamentary troops, before an honourable surrender forced by famine: Pendennis was among the last of the King's strongholds to fall in England. The site never lost its military role. Barracks, batteries and command posts were added from the 18th to the 20th century; during both World Wars, Pendennis directed the coastal artillery of west Cornwall. Disarmed in 1956 and handed over the following year to the Ministry of Works, it is now managed by English Heritage, which brings four centuries of coastal defence back to life there, from the Tudor keep to the Second World War Half Moon Battery.