Brownsea Castle

En un regard

Le château en bref

At the eastern tip of Brownsea Island, the largest in Poole Harbour, a castellated house watches over the narrow entrance channel to the harbour. Beneath its neo-Tudor façades lies one of the coastal blockhouses commissioned by Henry VIII in the 1540s to guard against a French or Spanish invasion. Nothing of the original blockhouse is visible above ground any more: its masonry survives in the basements, and its plan is known from a map of the harbour drawn up in 1597. The fort was rearmed by the Parliamentarians during the Civil War, then converted into a residence in the 18th century by William Benson. Enlarged into a four-storey tower by Humphrey Sturt in 1765, it received in the mid-19th century, under Colonel William Waugh, a new main range, a gatehouse and a private pier. Devastated by fire in January 1896, the castle was rebuilt the following year. Owned by the National Trust since 1962, it is today leased to the John Lewis Partnership, which runs it as a hotel reserved for its employees: the building is therefore not open to visitors, but its silhouette can be seen from the quay where the boats land and from the paths of the island, which is also famous for its red squirrels and for Baden-Powell's first Scout camp in 1907.