Sandown Castle

Henry VIII broke with Pope Paul III in 1533 to annul his long marriage to Catherine of Aragon and remarry. Catherine was the aunt of Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, who took the annulment as a personal insult; in 1538 France and the Empire declared an alliance against Henry, with the Pope encouraging both to attack England, and an invasion appeared certain. The Crown had traditionally left coastal defence to local lords and communities, and what existed was very limited in scale: simple blockhouses and towers in the south-west and along the Sussex coast, with a few more impressive works in the north. In 1539 Henry issued the order known as a device, giving instructions for the defence of the realm in time of invasion and for the building of forts along the English coastline.

Sandown and the adjacent castles of Deal and Walmer were built to protect the Downs in east Kent, the anchorage formed by the Goodwin Sands that gave access to Deal Beach, where enemy soldiers could easily be landed. The three stone castles were supported by four earthwork forts, the Great Turf, the Little Turf Bulwark, the Great White Bulwark of Clay and the Walmer Bulwark, and by a defensive ditch and bank 2.5 miles (4.0 km) long. Known collectively as the castles of the Downs, they cost the Crown a total of £27,092.

Sandown itself went up between April 1539 and the autumn of 1540, built by a team that included Richard Benese as surveyor, William Clement as master carpenter and Christopher Dickenson as master mason. It was nearly identical to its sister castle at Walmer, a keep 83 feet (25 m) across set among four rounded bastions, a moat and a curtain wall; the historian John Hale considered the design transitional between older English medieval work and newer Italian styles of defence. Three tiers of artillery gave the castle 39 firing positions, the heaviest and longest-ranged weapons on the upper levels, with 31 gunloops in the basement for handguns should close defence be required. The first garrison was a captain, two lieutenants, two porters, ten gunners and three soldiers, at an annual cost of £174.

The original invasion threat passed, but Sandown continued in military use into the seventeenth century, its condition repeatedly questioned. A survey of 1616 put the repairs needed at £437, and one of 1634 at £1,243, while an inspection in 1635 found the castle in reasonable structural condition but antiquated in design. A report of 1641 suggested that the three castles of the Downs required £8,000 of investment, £3,000 of it for additional sea defences. Sandown played no prominent part in the first war between the supporters of Charles I and Parliament; it was taken by Parliamentary forces at the start of the conflict in 1642.

After the few unsteady years of peace that followed 1645, the Second Civil War broke out in 1648, the King's Royalist supporters now joined by Scottish allies. The Parliamentary navy was based in the Downs, protected by Sandown and the other Henrician castles, but by May a Royalist insurrection was under way across Kent. Vice-Admiral William Batten, forced by Parliamentary officials to resign as Commander of the Fleet the previous year, now encouraged the fleet to join the Royalist faction, and Sir Henry Palmer, a former sailor, with other members of the Kentish gentry, also called on the crews to revolt, taking advantage of the many fellow Kentish men among them. Sandown Castle declared for the King, followed shortly afterwards by the garrisons at Deal and Walmer. With both the coastal fortresses and the navy in Royalist hands, Parliament feared that foreign forces might be landed along the coast, or aid sent to the Scots.

Parliament defeated the wider insurgency at the Battle of Maidstone at the start of June, then sent a force under Colonel Nathaniel Rich against Sandown and the other castles along the Downs. Walmer was besieged first and surrendered on 12 July. An earthwork fort was then built between Sandown and Deal, which may have been defended by around 150 men. Deal was attacked in late July, and in August artillery assaults began on Sandown as well. The Royalists mounted an attack from the fleet on 10 August, and a second on 15 August that landed 750 men supported by 50 soldiers from Sandown. Neither operation succeeded, and Sandown finally surrendered on 5 September, a few weeks after Deal.

In 1649 Parliament ordered supplies of ammunition and powder sent to Sandown and the other castles of the Downs, and fresh earthworks were raised between Sandown and Deal during the Interregnum against the threat of Dutch attack. The garrison remained substantial in these years, a governor and 21 soldiers, until the restoration of Charles II in 1660, when the King reduced it to a captain and 18 men.

The former Parliamentarian Colonel John Hutchinson was detained at Sandown by the Crown in 1664. His wife Lucy, who afterwards publicised his case widely, described the castle as ruinous and his imprisonment there as inhumane; Hutchinson died in it after several months, his doctor blaming his physical decline on the conditions in which he had been kept. In the Glorious Revolution of 1688 against Charles's brother James II, the townsfolk of Deal seized Sandown Castle on behalf of William III, the Prince of Orange.

In 1785 the sea broke through the outer walls of the castle, and coastal erosion continued over the next few years. Sandown was first described as barely habitable, and by 1793 as unfit for habitation. It was repaired and garrisoned again during the French Revolutionary Wars, with two new artillery batteries built to the north, and early in the nineteenth century it was used by the early coastguard for the suppression of local smuggling.

The erosion went on through the nineteenth century. In 1863 the War Office sold off the reusable materials of the fortification for £564 and demolished the upper parts of the castle, leaving a level platform across the lower keep and bastions. Part of the stone was bought by the Earl of Granville for his building work at Walmer Castle, while other masonry was reused in the construction of Deal Pier. The sea destroyed one of the adjacent artillery batteries; the other was converted for use by the coastguard. In 1882 the Royal Engineers used explosives to remove around 600 tonnes of masonry for an officer's house at Dover Castle, causing further damage.

In 1883 the architectural historian Hayter Lewis complained to the British Archaeological Association that more needed to be done to protect the ruins, contrasting their poor treatment with that of the other castles along the coast. Concerns about the safety of the seaward ruins continued, and in 1894 the Royal Engineers blew up the bastions and the keep on that side using guncotton. The town of Deal then bought the remains from the government for £35 for use in its local sea defences. What survives has been protected as a scheduled monument since 1960, and between 1988 and 1989 it was encased in concrete to form a sea wall, though it remains vulnerable to further erosion by the sea.