Pevensey Castle
History
Pevensey Castle resides in East Sussex, England, along the southern coast. Its strategic location near Pevensey Bay is why a fortification has existed here since around 290, when the Romans built the Saxon Shore fort of Anderitum, the largest of the Roman forts on that coast. Wooden piles found in a 1994 excavation date its construction. After the Roman occupation ended, the fort walls protected the area until at least the late 5th century.
In 1066, William the Conqueror set sail from France to challenge Harold Godwinson for the Crown of England. Aboard his ships, William brought with him knights, horses, and wood to erect wooden palisade walls for protection. Before dawn on September 28th, three days after Harold's victory at Stamford Bridge, William sailed his invasion fleet of between 700 and 1,000 ships into Pevensey Bay. After landing, he immediately built a temporary fortification, almost certainly within the walls of the old Roman fort of Anderitum, to shelter his troops. He cut a ditch across the peninsula to isolate the ruins from the mainland and repaired the walls to create a castle. The next day, William marched his army along the coast to nearby Hastings, pillaging and burning the surrounding countryside while he waited for Harold to arrive from the north, and constructed a second wooden castle there. After defeating Harold at the Battle of Hastings, William began building wooden motte and bailey castles throughout England to control the country, thus starting the castle era.
The Roman West Gate, with its bands of red tile.
In 1067, William returned to Normandy by way of Pevensey and granted Pevensey Castle to his trusted half-brother Robert, Count of Mortain, who was probably the first to build permanent medieval defenses at Pevensey. With Roman ruins serving as outer walls, the inner courtyard was divided into an inner and outer bailey separated by a ditch and wooden palisade. The inner bailey contained the medieval gatehouse, keep, and chapel, while the outer bailey encompassed more domestic buildings, including a granary.
In 1088, the year after William's death, Pevensey's strategic importance was demonstrated again during the war between his eldest son, Robert Curthose, who succeeded William as Duke of Normandy, and Robert's younger brother, William Rufus, who succeeded to the English throne. When an attempt was made to make Robert king of England in William's place, the Count of Mortain and his brother Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, supported Duke Robert and held Pevensey Castle against the king. There was a real danger that Robert would invade England in the footsteps of his father, so William Rufus personally led a siege of Pevensey by land and sea. The castle's powerful defenses resisted every assault, but after six weeks, food was running short, and with no prospect of reinforcements from Robert, the rebels agreed to a truce.
Despite this rebellion, the Count of Mortain was allowed to keep Pevensey. But his son later lost it, along with the other family estates in England, because of his opposition to William Rufus's successor and younger brother, Henry I, who granted most of the confiscated property to a Norman lord, Gilbert Laigle. Nevertheless, the castle seems to have been kept in royal hands for security. In 1101, when Duke Robert again threatened to invade England, Henry I spent the summer at Pevensey in anticipation of an attack. In 1147, King Stephen besieged the castle and starved out the garrison, and the first major stone buildings, including the keep and gatehouse, may date from the reign of Richard I in the 1190s.
After 1230, Pevensey Castle passed through the hands of a series of royal favorites: Peter de Rivallis, Gilbert Marshal, Earl of Pembroke, and finally Peter of Savoy, who was granted the castle in 1246 and appears to have taken considerable interest in maintaining its fabric. In 1254, he arranged for the service of "heckage" at Pevensey, a feudal obligation to maintain the timber palisades of the castle, to be replaced by cash payments. The most likely explanation is that he had just made heckage redundant by replacing the timber defenses of the inner bailey with the great stone walls and towers that stand today.
The medieval gatehouse and the causeway.
On the 14th of May 1264, an army led by Simon de Montfort inflicted a crushing defeat on the king's forces at the Battle of Lewes. In the aftermath, several royalist leaders, including John de Warenne, Earl of Surrey, William de Valence, Guy de Lusignan, and Hugh Bigod, fled to Pevensey Castle and then sailed to France to join the exiled queen, leaving a garrison behind. The royalist constable of Pevensey was ordered to surrender the castle. He refused, and a siege ensued. In September, local knights were called upon to help stop the garrison from making destructive raids on the surrounding countryside. The besiegers dug a ditch to cut the castle off from the mainland, but this only provoked an attempt to resupply the castle with men and arms by sea in December.
The younger Simon de Montfort, son of the earl, was heavily involved in the siege. The castle could be resupplied by sea, so the attackers could not starve it out, and the garrison held out. The siege, which had cost more than 800 pounds to conduct during the first two months alone, was raised in July 1265, when the younger Simon left to join the campaign that ended at Evesham on August 4th, where his father was killed. In the course of the fighting, the south wall of the Roman enclosure was thrown down, and considerable damage was inflicted on the neighboring parish churches of Pevensey. After the royalist victory, the castle was restored to Peter of Savoy. After Peter of Savoy's death in 1268, Pevensey Castle passed to Henry III's queen, Eleanor of Provence, where it remained crown property for roughly 100 years.
In 1372, John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, took ownership of Pevensey. In 1377, he refused to garrison the castle against French attacks, claiming that if it were destroyed, he had enough money to rebuild it. Such actions fueled his unpopularity, and in 1381, during the Peasants' Revolt, a mob broke into the castle, burned the court records held there, and attacked Gaunt's steward.
In 1394, John of Gaunt appointed his family retainer, Sir John Pelham, constable of Pevensey Castle. Pelham later supported Gaunt's banished son, Henry Bolingbroke, when he usurped the English Crown from Richard II in 1399, and he joined the rebel forces when Bolingbroke first landed in England. During his absence, the castle was besieged by local levies. His wife, Joan, wrote a celebrated letter to Pelham informing him of her circumstances, and she successfully held the castle.
My Dear Lord it is right that you know my position, I am here laid in manner of a siege … so that I may not out, nor no vitals get without much difficulty. Wherefore my dear may it please you, by the advice of your wise council, to give remedy to the salvation of your castle and the malice of your enemies. The Holy Trinity keep you from enemies and soon send me good tidings of you. Written at Pevensey in the Castle by your own poor J. Pelham.
When Bolingbroke was crowned King Henry IV, Pelham received the castle and Honour of Pevensey in reward for his services. In 1405, a stone causeway and drawbridge replaced the wooden bridge, . Among those held at the castle were King James I of Scotland, who was captured at sea on his way to France as a boy, and Joan of Navarre, the second wife of Henry IV, who was imprisoned by her stepson, Henry V, between December 1419 and March 1420 before being moved to Leeds Castle in Kent. She was charged with witchcraft and plotting to kill her stepson, Henry V.
A cannon on a reproduction carriage in the inner bailey.
Under the Tudors, the castle fell out of use altogether, and a survey of 1573 records that the buildings were in total ruin. The defenses were neglected until the threat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 caused the construction of a gun emplacement, armed with two cannons described as "demi-culverins of small value". One of those cannons still survives, on a modern reproduction carriage, in the inner bailey. After the Civil War, Parliamentary commissioners sold the castle to a builder for 40 pounds, and the Crown reacquired it in 1660. It later passed to the Cavendish family, and the 9th Duke of Devonshire gave it to the state in 1925.
After the fall of France in World War II in 1940, Pevensey again became a potential location for invading England from the south. Consequently, a command and observation post was created within the castle, and perimeter defenses were refortified with modern machine gun pillboxes and a blockhouse for anti-tank weapons was built at the Roman West Gate. Moreover, the castle was repurposed to serve as barracks for a garrison during the war. From early 1944, the United States Army Air Corps used it as a radio direction center. The machine gun pillboxes within the medieval castle walls were left intact to remind of the castle's history.
Castle Highlights
After entering the Roman walls via Roman East Gate, the medieval castle and its inner bailey are visible to the left. It's a stone castle ruin similar to others in England. Upon remembering Pevensey Castle as the first fortification built by William the Conqueror nearly 1,000 years ago, its awe-inspiring history becomes evident. William would not recognize the castle today as it was simply a wooden motte and bailey when he erected it in 1066.
The well in the inner bailey.
The gatehouse is one of the predominant features of Pevensey Castle. While it no longer consists of two majestic drum towers flanking the vaulted entranceway, the single remaining tower still conveys one of the earliest examples of this twin-tower medieval design. The postern gate that once provided access to the shoreline from the castle represents an additional noteworthy portion of the architecture. During sieges, it enabled ingress and egress of supplies to/from the castle unless besiegers restricted access to the sea. Moreover, the Roman walls of Fort Anderitum still exist around the medieval castle.
After being concealed under a dirt mound until rediscovery during the early 20th century, the foundations of the keep illustrate a stunning aspect of the castle. The impressions of two massive towers flanking the entrance suggest a great tower once comprising the keep and domestic apartments.
Since guided tours do not exist for Pevensey Castle, I highly recommend the purchase of a guidebook upon paying admission for entry within the gift shop. It contains helpful information as you explore the castle. There is also an audio tour available in the gift shop. An extensive visit only requires a half day at best, an excursion to nearby Hastings Castle on the same day is suggested.
Pevensey Castle is also haunted.
