Printed and Published at the Dover Express Works. 1916.

ANNALS OF DOVER.

SECTION ONE. DOVER CASTLE.

V. LATER FORTIFICATIONS.

The fortifications of various dates subsequent to the completion of the outer circuit were (i) works carried out during the wars of the Barons and the Wars of the Roses; (2) adaptations effected by Henry VIII. to suit the modes of warfare introduced by the use of gunpowder; and (3) the extensive works constructed between 1760 and 1810, during our wars with America, France, Holland and Spain.

In the year 1262, a national crisis caused Henry III. to improve the defences of Dover Castle. When he came here resolved to resist the demands of the Barons, he found that the fortress then only required some minor improvements to complete the important works (suggested by the experience of the French Siege) carried out by Hubert de Burgh and his successors.

A hundred years elapsed before any further great works were undertaken at the Castle. Soon after the Accession of Edward III. there was a large expenditure, described as being "for the salvation of Dover Castle," the fortress playing a conspicuous part in this reign. This King was laying claim to the Crown of France, and, anxious that the Castle should be ready for emergencies, he sent to Dover a surveyor to estimate the number of soldiers that would be required to man the walls, towers and Keep, and there is now in the Record Office a report dated 1346. The Surveyor replied: "I beg to inform you, my Lord, that your letter concerning the Castle of Dover came to me at Hythe.... and the same day I went to Dover, and on the day after the sub-Constable and I went to count all the loop-holes in the Castle, and found that in the outer wall of the Castle there are 555 loop-holes, and in the same wall are 19 towers and a grand tower outside the gate, and another grand tower on the north side, of which grand towers the loop-holes are included in the aforesaid number, viz , 555. And because the rule in every castle or town enclosed by a wall is that there should be three men to every two loop-holes, 832 men will be required for this outer wall. And in the tower and round the Keep and in the inner bailey are 378 loop-holes, to guard which 168 men would he sufficient, making 1,000 in all." The first grand tower outside the gate would be the Constable's Tower on the spur, and the grand tower on the north side St. John's Tower. Dover at that date had a thoroughly equipped Castle, in which ten hundred men could keep many thousands at bay.

There was another great effort to put the Castle in an effective state of defence at the beginning of the reign of Richard II., but no attack was then made upon it. Other places on the coast were raided by the French, but Dover was unmolested, because the Castle was then regarded as invulnerable.

Edward IV. spent £10,000 on Dover Castle in the year 1481. The particular works that were then carried out cannot now be identified, but they must have been extensive, for there were at that time 2,000,000 bricks used.

Henry VIII. made many changes in the fortifications to adapt them to the use of artillery. This King had annexed a considerable local revenue by taking possession of the Constable's lands, and he applied it in erecting forts at the Castle and along the coast on both sides as adjuncts to the Castle, including the Mote Bulwark, under the Castle Cliff, Archcliffe Fort, Sandgate Castle, Walmer Castle, Deal Castle and Sandown Castle, all of which were reckoned as a part of the defences of Dover.

Holingshed's Chronicle has credited Queen Elizabeth with having "bestowed more charge in repairing and re-edifying the Castle than had been spent hereabouts since the first building thereof," which must have been an exaggerated statement, for it is difficult to discover anything that was done to the Castle in that reign except the expenditure of £428 on the Royal apartments in the Keep previous to her Majesty's visit in 1573. Holingshed flatteringly relates how Lord Cobham, the Constable, and Richard Barry, the Lieutenant, under the Queen's orders, had carried out great works of fortification, so that "within the walls thereof is now raised such a mount at the north side thereof as thereby the Castle is double as strong as before." That work cannot now be identified.

In the Stuart Period the Castle was more utterly neglected than it had been in any time during its history, yet even then there was some expenditure. When James I. was at war with Holland, in the year 1624, he spent £1,000 on the batteries. Charles I. did nothing to repair the fortifications, but he spent £2,000 on the Royal apartments to prepare for the reception of his bridle, Henrietta of France in 1625.

The neglected state of the Castle in the time of Charles I. is shown by the fact that less than a dozen civilians were able to capture it for the Parliamentary Party in 1642; and the Commonwealth were not much more liberal, for they only spent £2,000 in "repairing the breaches."

After a century of decay, the Castle was surveyed by the Duke of Cumberland in 1745, when barracks for 1,000 men were built. In 1779, when England was at war with France, Spain, and our American Colonies, Guilford Battery was built at the foot of the Castle cliff, two batteries within the Castle, and a company of Royal Military Artificers were quartered here to carry out repairs.

When war was declared against the French Republic in 1793, the improvements of the Castle defences were zealously pushed forward. Parliament having voted £50,000 with the object of so strengthening the position that an invading force could be withstood for at least a fortnight, the idea being that if an invading army were checked to that extent there would be time for troops to be collected to defend the approaches to the Capital, and for the Fleet to assemble to cut off the invaders' communications. The works carried out for that purpose were the construction of new batteries along the edge of the cliff and on the north-east side of the Castle. Those on the north-east walls were masked by great earth bastions, which still remain. Additions were made to the great mound at the spur, which entailed the closing of the northern vehicular entrance which, until that time, existed there, leading up the incline causeway to Kingsgate. At the same time, a new vehicular entrance was made on the south-west, at Canon's Gate, leading off the Castle Hill Road, which was at that time constructed. The existing great mound on the town side of the Constable's Tower was then thrown up, mounted with cannon, and a breastwork below, which was made to defend the new road, still remains. The old sally-ports northward, which had long been closed, were re-opened, and fitted for large bodies of troops to suddenly issue to check attacks from the landward. At the same time, 211 guns were mounted on the Western Heights. The following dates of works, partially a recapitulation, show at a glance the new developments at the Castle in the latter half of the Eighteenth Century: —

1745. — The Duke of Cumberland's survey.

1747. — New barracks first occupied.

1780. — Powder magazine constructed in Keep Yard.

1785. — Royal Military Artificers established at the Castle.

1793. — £50,000 vote for Castle defences.

1795. — New Castle Road commenced.

1796. — Guilford Shaft from Castle to shore built.

1797. — New entrance at Canon Gate completed.

1798. — Castle Hill New Road completed.

1799. — New Castle defences and armament completed.

The first works in the fortress of Dover in the Nineteenth Century commenced three years after those above detailed, but they were mainly connected with the fortification of the Western Heights, which position, though used for batteries in the previous Century, was not permanently fortified until 1803, and the works were completed in August, 1805.

The Commission of Defence in 1858 initiated another period of activity in the fortress. Officers' quarters were built in the Castle, the Castle Church, which had been in ruins since the Stuart Period, was restored, canteens were built for soldiers, with a reading and recreation room adjoining, quarters for married soldiers, and a school for their children. The Castle's waterworks were brought up to date by means of a new well and steam pumps; and, in addition to these works within the walls, £400,000 was spent in the construction of an entirely new position of defence, called Fort Burgoyne, on the north of the Castle.

Soon after the Franco-German War of 1870-1, the old guns were removed from the Castle batteries and replaced by new ones. These have now, in turn, been removed, and replaced elsewhere by more modern defences.

The latest notable work at the Castle was the enlargement of the Constable's Tower in 1883 to fit it for the residence of the General Commanding the South-Eastern District. Old stones from the dismantled Sandown Castle were used so that the enlargement should not be in glaring contrast with the ancient building.