Another Day, Another Castle (or 2)

I set off this morning for the town of Deal. This is a little town on the Kent coast. I was heading for the Castle at Deal, which was ordered to be built by Henry the eighth. This was to defend England from the French and Spanish. It is one of a series of Castles right along the south east coastline. It is nothing like what we would imagine a castle looks like. No enormously tall keep like I saw at Rochester and Dover. Deal Castle is lower in height than the houses that have since been built near the castle, and they are only two or three stories high. Also instead of being square or dominating a hill top, it is right next to the beach and rounded on all sides with a deep straight walled dry moat going all the way round the building. Unlike the castles of earlier times, this castle was built fire canons rather than defend from rocks and soldiers armed with swords and spears. Being much younger than Rochester or Dover, the stone work is in much better condition that the other castles I have seen so far. It was never needed to defend England from invaders, but was fought over during the civil war of the 17th century, being in the hands of both the Royalists and the Roundheads. The saddest things about the place was that much of the stone came from monasteries that were destroyed when Henry dissolved the last of the monasteries in 1538. The castle was begun to be built in early 1540. It is thought that the stone came from the monastery of St Augustine in Canterbury. I have put in a picture of a piece of carved stone in the walls of the castle.

After looking at Deal Castle, I headed a little further south to Walmer, which was another castle built at the same time, but this place had not been used just as a castle. Sometime during the 18th century, it was begun to be converted into a semi grand country house for the Warden of the Cinque Ports, which cover south east England. These are towns such as Deal, Sandwich, Dover, Rye and some other places I can't think of just at the moment. The house was full of beatiful furniture and paintings. At different times, the Duke of Wellington, William Pitt the Younger, Sir Winston Churchill, Sir Robert Menzies and the Queen Mother were all Wardens of the Cinque Ports and all but Churchill lived in the Castle to some degree. The Duke of Wellington and one of his nieces layed out a series of lovely gardens to walk through and a woodland walk to make your way through. It was a very pleasant time, and I must have spent nearly three hours there. 

On my way back to Canterbury, I made some detours into some of the smaller villages just to have a sticky and drove down some "very" narrow country lanes and wondered where on earth I was heading. Then this evening I picked up Jane from the conference and we went back to Sandwich which is a beautiful Mediaeval and Tudor period town. We had fish and chips sitting on the quay over the River Stour.