Westenhanger Castle

The land at Westenhanger was royal ground long before there was a castle on it: King Canute owned the estate in 1035. A permanent structure followed only in 1343, when the de Criol family, descendants of Bertram de Criol, built on the site, the work credited to John de Criol and carried out under a licence to crenellate. What went up was a fortified quadrangular manor house, reflecting the opulence of its owners.

The castle stayed with the family until the Wars of the Roses, when Sir Thomas de Criol, also written Kyriell, was beheaded the day after the Second Battle of St Albans by order of Queen Margaret of Anjou. He left no sons, and Westenhanger passed to his son-in-law, Sir John Fogge; the manor house at that time contained 126 rooms. Building work at Westenhanger is also credited to Sir Edward Poynings, and Henry II, Rosamund de Clifford, Henry VIII and Elizabeth I all count among the house's connections.

Thomas "Customer" Smythe was granted Westenhanger, or Ostenhanger as it then was, as a reward for his service as the Queen's collector of imports. In 1588, with the castle in his hands, Elizabeth I used it as the command centre for the 14,000 Kentish troops who were to defend the south coast against the Spanish Armada.

In 1656 the exiled Charles II was persuaded to return to England and to Westenhanger, which lay conveniently close to the coast. Thousands of armed men were instructed to hide in the surrounding woodlands, and when the King entered the house word would be given for them to rush in and murder him and his followers. He was forewarned as he was about to leave for England.

Customer Smythe's son, Sir Thomas Smythe, commissioned the construction of the Discovery for the East India Company in 1600 and founded the expedition that carried her to America. On 19 December 1606, alongside the Susan Constant and the Godspeed and under captain John Smith, she sailed for Virginia, entering Chesapeake Bay on 13 May the following year. Out of that voyage came the first permanent English-speaking settlement in the New World, at Jamestown in Virginia.

The estate descended in the Smythe family until 1869, when Percy Smythe, 8th Viscount Strangford and the last to hold the title, died without issue. Westenhanger went to his nephew, Captain Hugh Baillie, who himself died without issue in 1876.

Through the centuries the castle was reduced in size and suffered serious neglect, declining steadily towards ruination. Since the mid-1990s its owners have worked with English Heritage to consolidate the stonework and prevent further deterioration of the manor house, the castle walls and the associated buildings; the medieval barns that stand intact outside the curtain wall have been brought back under the same ownership, and work to restore them continues. Westenhanger is protected as a scheduled monument and has been listed grade I since August 1952, and it is now hired out as a conference and wedding venue.

On 19 December 2008 the Jamestown UK Foundation, a charity set up to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown, presented Westenhanger Castle with a replica of the Discovery, which the castle now houses.