Walmer Castle

En un regard

Le château en bref

Walmer Castle stands on the Walmer seafront, south of Deal, in Kent. It belongs to the group of three "Castles of the Downs", together with Deal and Sandown, built by Henry VIII to protect the Downs anchorage, a natural shelter lying between the Goodwin Sands and the coast. An artillery fort with a circular, symmetrical plan, it combines a central tower, four semicircular bastions and a masonry-lined moat. From the 18th century it became the official residence of the Lords Warden of the Cinque Ports, which gradually transformed it into a country house surrounded by remarkable gardens. William Pitt the Younger, the Duke of Wellington, who died there in 1852, Winston Churchill and Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother are among the Lords Warden associated with the place. Owned by the Crown and placed in the care of English Heritage, the castle and its gardens are open to the public; the gardens, with some thirty acres for the estate as a whole, are among the most remarkable on the Kent coast.