Upnor Castle

Sorting through more photos I found these from November 2019, fancy forgetting a day out!
I had put them in a seperate folder instead of the blog folder.

Situated in tranquil grounds on the banks of the River Medway, Upnor Castle is set in a quaint, picturesque village area backed by rolling wooded hills. 

Strictly speaking Upnor is more of a gun fort than a castle. In 1559 Queen Elizabeth I commissioned the building of the fort to defend her warships at anchor in the reaches of the Medway and Chatham  dockyard. As Elizabeth's reign progressed relations with Spain deteriorated and fears grew that the River Medway would suffer an attack from the large Spanish forces operating from their bases in the Netherlands, so substantial enhancements were made. The Water Bastion was modified to take heavier weaponry and a timber palisade was installed in front of it to provide protection from enemy landing parties and to stop ships coming alongside the bastion at high tide. A gatehouse and curtain walls were also added with two new structures, the North and South Towers, overlooking the waterfront and enabling flanking fire along a ditch that fronted the wall. Two earthwork forts, Bay Sconce and Warham Sconce, were also added.

BUT all those enhancements weren't well maintained, and when the Dutch sailed up the Medway in June 1667 to attack the dockyard the enemy fleet met very little resistance and when it left two days later, it had destroyed or captured a large number of the Royal Navy ships anchored at Chatham.

The humiliation at Medway prompted substantial upgrades to coastal defences around key military ports.  All these new facilities made Upnor Castle redundant and by the late seventeenth century it had been relegated to a stores complex and magazine. The castle was modified accordingly with the gun platforms on the roof of the main building removed. It continued to be used as a magazine until 1827 and thereafter served in various roles until formally recognised as a museum in 1945.

To access the barracks we parked on the edge of the village and strolled down through the picturesque High Street of Upnor’s lovely village, passing by lovingly maintained pretty clapboard homes along the cobbled road.

The first floor of the main building was used for stores.

The Battle of Medway exhibition

Sleeping quarters

This was the mechanism that operated a clock on the roof but I forgot to take a photograph of it!

Cantilevered staircase

I think this is a folly, just outside the fort.

It's also a venue for weddings, there was one taking place at the time of our visit.

As well as visiting the castle it's also a nice place to take a picnic, to sit and watch the river,

and then visit one of the two really good pubs.

∼ Be safe and well ∼ 

Polly x