Sandsfoot Castle

An invasion of England appeared certain after France and the Holy Roman Empire declared an alliance against Henry VIII in 1538. In 1539 the king issued the order known as a device, instructing the "defence of the realm in time of invasion" and the building of forts along a coastline whose defence had until then been left largely to local communities.

Sandsfoot was placed on the cliffs above the Weymouth Bay anchorage, opposite Portland Castle across the water, built to defeat enemy ships with heavy artillery and with minimal protection against attack from the land. It was completed by 1541 at a cost of £3,887 and run by a captain appointed by the Crown. The antiquarian John Leland saw it soon after construction and called it "a right goodlie and warlyke castle".

The sea worked at the cliff almost at once, opening what was reported as a "great gulf" on the seaward side. Repairs costing £383 were needed by 1583, carried out by the captain, John Wadham of Catherston, who died the following year. During the invasion scare that came with the Spanish Armada in 1588 the garrison was supplemented by another fifty men, and Sir George Bampfield spent £211 more on repairs in 1610-11.

Sir Richard Morryson's survey of 1623 found ten iron guns - one culverin, five demi-culverins, two sakers, a minion and a falcon - manned by the captain, five gunners and three soldiers. The fort was in poor condition, one corner of the gun platform already undermined by the sea, and repair was costed at £459. The rectangular earthworks on the landward side, with bastions at the north and west corners, were probably raised that same year.

Weymouth was predominantly Parliamentarian in the Civil War. Robert Dormer, Earl of Carnarvon, entered Dorset with an army in 1643 and the town surrendered, putting Sandsfoot in Royalist hands from August 1643 to June 1644; during that period the castle may have been used as a Royalist mint. Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, then retook the county. Colonel William Ashburnham, the Royalist governor of Weymouth, withdrew to Portland Castle without a fight, and Sandsfoot surrendered to Essex after three hours of negotiation. Parliament ordered the garrison demobilised in 1647; it was not, and John Hayne became captain.

A fresh demobilisation order came in 1661, the year after Charles II's restoration, and an argument over the local defences broke out between Humphrey Weld, lieutenant-governor of Portland and captain of Sandsfoot, and Charles Stewart, Duke of Richmond. Wyke Regis petitioned Weld against the demobilisation, fearing the Duke would revoke their traditional exemption from militia service. Weld championed their case but was dismissed as lieutenant-governor, and the Duke occupied the castle with his militia. A compromise in 1665 restored Weld to his post while declaring Sandsfoot redundant and condemning it to demolition; the order was never carried out, and the castle served as a storehouse until at least 1691.

By 1725 the castle had become ruinous. Its remains were sold early in the century to the town of Weymouth, whose people reused some of the stone to build their new town bridge. The carved stone Elizabethan arms were moved to All Saints Church at Wyke Regis in 1825. Captains went on being appointed all the same, Gabriel Stewart holding the post as late as 1795.

Most of the gun platform fell into the sea as the cliffs eroded, though when is uncertain: proposals ran from first falls in the 18th century to a main fall in 1835 to a collapse later in the 19th. In 1902 Weymouth Corporation bought the castle from the Department of Woods and Forests for £150.

The ruins were closed to the public on safety grounds in 1930. In the Second World War the castle housed an anti-aircraft battery within the defences around Portland Harbour. The last remaining embrasure of the gun platform collapsed in the 1950s.

By 2009 the site sat on English Heritage's at-risk register, and the Heritage Lottery Fund awarded £23,100 for a survey and £194,700 in 2011 for substantial repairs. The castle reopened in 2012 and was removed from the at-risk register the following year. Historic England considers it "one of the most substantial examples" of an unaltered 16th-century blockhouse in England; it is a scheduled monument and, since December 1953, a grade II* listed building. In 2021 it was closed to the public once more after vertical cracks on an internal wall were found to have widened, and permanent metal fencing was put up around it.