England · Ruin
Salcombe Castle
Salcombe Castle (also called Fort Charles) is a small coastal gun battery on a rocky promontory off North Sands, Salcombe, Devon. Built in the 1530s for coastal defence, its surviving fabric today consists of a semicircular multi-storey tower and an attached rectangular tower linked by a section of wall, accessible on foot at low tide.
Its prime
1539
Today
Ruin
As it stood in 1539
The shape it held in its prime.
Perched on a low rocky outcrop reachable at low tide, the fort presents a broad semicircular, four-storey stone tower about 7 metres high with regularly spaced gun ports near its upper level. A short stretch of curtain wall joins this round tower to a squat rectangular tower roughly 6 metres high. The masonry is pale local stone, faces the sea on all sides, and at its prime the towers sat complete with gun embrasures opening toward the channel.
Its story
The story of Salcombe Castle.
Salcombe Castle — also called Fort Charles — was built in the 1530s on a rocky outcrop off the beach of North Sands, as protection against French raids. Unusually, it was raised by public subscription under Viscount Courtenay's direction, not as part of Henry VIII's 'Kinges Works', the royal programme behind most of the batteries and castles of the South and South West.
Its moment came in the Civil War, when Sir Edmund Fortescue of East Allington held out here for nearly five months against a besieging Parliamentary force.
The ruin that survives comprises a four-storey semicircular tower, 7 metres tall with gun ports near the top, joined by a section of wall to a rectangular tower 6 metres high. The outcrop is easily reached on foot at low tide, and the structure is a Grade II listed building and ancient monument within the South Devon Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.
Step inside
7 places to explore in 1539.
The record describes 7 distinct spots at Salcombe Castle — including the full exterior approach. Create your own photoreal reconstruction and walk through every one — more scenes means more photos, more angles and more rooms of the immersive experience.
Create History
Recreate Salcombe Castle with AI to explore it.
The artist rebuilds it as it stood in 1539 — a photoreal walk that belongs to you alone. Pay with coins, no subscription needed.
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