Portland Castle

Henry VIII's 1533 breach with Pope Paul III, to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, was taken as an insult by her nephew Charles V; by 1538 France and the Empire had allied against England with papal encouragement, and invasion seemed imminent. Henry's 1539 "device" ordered forts built along the coast, and Lord Russell, inspecting the anchorage known as Portland Roads, recommended two castles — Portland and Sandsfoot — to guard it from naval attack. Building began that summer under the royal paymaster Oliver Lawrence and was finished by 1541 at a cost of £4,964. Thomas Mervin was appointed captain with four gunners and two others; his successor from 1545, John Leweston, also served as Lieutenant of Portland and commanded 13 men, paid for out of the proceeds of the recent Dissolution of the Monasteries. A 1547–48 survey recorded a demi-cannon, two demi-culverins, four portpieces and four slings in store, alongside hagbushes, bows, bills and pikes.

Peace with France in 1558 drew attention away from Portland; surveys in 1574 and 1583 both found it in poor condition. War with Spain from 1585 brought £228 of repairs, and by 1596 the garrison still numbered a captain and 13 men.

Portland began the English Civil War under Parliamentary control but was seized in 1643 by Royalists who talked their way in by posing as Parliamentary soldiers. As the war turned against the King in the south-west, Parliamentary forces besieged the castle for four months in 1644 and again the following year; it finally surrendered to Vice-Admiral William Batten in April 1646. Why a fort so exposed on its landward side held out so long is unclear — the historian Peter Harrington has suggested its low-lying position may have made it hard to bombard from the sea.

The castle stayed garrisoned through the Interregnum, doubling as a prison, with 103 men attached in 1651, and helped defend Portland Roads during a three-day naval battle of the First Anglo-Dutch War in 1653. After Charles II's restoration in 1660 the garrison was cut back to pre-war levels, but continuing Dutch threats brought repairs to the fortifications; by 1676 it carried 16 guns.

Through the 18th century the castle mainly protected merchant shipping, including vessels carrying Portland stone, against privateers. Reports in 1702 and 1715 described a dilapidated fortification whose foundations had lost 112 feet to the sea, its armament shrunk to seven guns; by 1779 a caretaker garrison of three men held eight guns in a castle reportedly unrepaired for 30 years. Its guns were increased again in the Napoleonic Wars, to six 24-pounders, six 12-pounders and two 9-pounders.

With Napoleon's defeat the castle was disarmed and leased to the Portland churchman John Manning, who converted it into a private house; his son Charles Manning took the property over in 1834 and turned the former master gunner's house alongside it into the grander Captain's House. A breakwater built across Portland Roads in the late 1840s brought new forts on the Verne heights and the sea front, but the old castle itself was left untouched. Charles Manning died in 1869, and renewed invasion fears brought the War Office back to use the castle as accommodation for officers, including the adjutant of the Verne Citadel.

In 1908 Portland was placed on the "Schedule C" list, meaning the Army continued to hold it but took Office of Works advice on repairs. Portland Harbour became a major naval base after 1914 and the castle served as an ordnance store; it returned to use as a military residence between the wars, then through the Second World War housed offices and accommodation for British and American troops, with part of it again storing ordnance.

The War Office relinquished the castle to the Ministry of Works in 1949, and it opened to the public in 1955, its interior presented as it might have looked in the 16th century with most 19th- and 20th-century additions stripped out. The Captain's House and its garden, used by the neighbouring HMS Osprey helicopter base until 1999, opened to visitors after the base closed.

Portland Castle is now cared for by English Heritage and run as a visitor attraction, drawing 22,207 visitors in 2010 and a record 30,000 in 2023. The main castle is a Grade I listed building and the Captain's House Grade II*. Historic England judges it "one of the best preserved and best known examples" of Henry VIII's forts, and its octagonal great hall and 16th-century kitchen fireplace survive intact within the keep.