Pevensey Castle

Pevensey Castle Latin: Anderitum
Sussex
Pevensey Castle from the air
Type:	Castle
Location
Grid reference:	TQ644048
Location:	50°49’8"N, 0°20’3"E
History
	Built c. 290 AD
Battles:	First Siege of Pevensey (1088) Second Siege of Pevensey (1147) Third Siege of Pevensey (1264–65) Fourth Siege of Pevensey (1399)
Information
Condition:	Ruin
Owned by:	English Heritage

Pevensey Castle is a mediæval castle built upon and within the walls of a Roman Saxon Shore fort at Pevensey in Sussex. The site is a Scheduled Monument in the care of English Heritage and is open to visitors.

The Roman fort was built around AD 290 and was known as Anderitum, the fort appears to have been the base for a fleet called the Classis Anderidaensis. The reasons for its construction are debated: it is generally accepted that the system of shore forts was a Roman defensive system to guard the British and Gallic coasts against Saxon pirates, although some historians have asserted that Anderita and the further British forts were built by Marcus Carausius, the usurper Emperor of Britain, to prevent Rome from reimposing its control over Britannia.

Anderitum fell into ruin following the end of the Roman occupation but was reoccupied in 1066 by the Normans, for whom it became a key strategic bulwark. A stone keep and fortification was built within the Roman walls and faced several sieges. Although its garrison was twice starved into surrender, it was never successfully stormed. The castle was occupied more or less continuously until the 16th century, apart from a possible break in the early 13th century when it was slighted. It had been abandoned again by the late 16th century and remained a crumbling, partly overgrown ruin until it was acquired by the state in 1925.

Pevensey Castle was reoccupied between 1940 and 1945, during the Second World War, when it was garrisoned by units from the Home Guard, the British and Canadian armies and the United States Army Air Corps. Machine-gun posts were built into the Roman and Norman walls to control the flat land around Pevensey and guard against the threat of a German invasion. They were left in place after the war and can still be seen today.

Location and dimensions

Plan of Pevensey Castle

Pevensey Castle was built by the Romans on a spur of sand and clay that stands about thirty feet above sea level. In Roman times this spur was a peninsula that projected into a tidal lagoon and marshes, making it a strong natural defensive position. A harbour is thought to have been situated near the south wall of the castle, sheltered by a long spit of shingle where the village of Pevensey Bay stands now. A small river, Pevensey Haven, runs along the north side of the peninsula and would originally have discharged into the lagoon, but is now largely silted up.

Since Roman times, silting and land reclamation in the Pevensey Levels have pushed the coastline out by about a mile, leaving the castle landlocked. The intervening landscape between the castle and the sea is now a flat marshland drained by a network of ditches and sewers or field drains. The modern village of Pevensey is mostly to the east of the castle, at the end of the ancient peninsula. Castle Road (the B2191) curves around the Roman north wall and connects Pevensey to the nearby village of Westham. A public footpath crosses the interior of the castle, linking the two villages. An area of reclaimed land, formerly part of the Pevensey tidal lagoon but now marshland and fields crossed by the Eastbourne-to-Hastings railway line, is situated immediately to the south of the castle.

The castle occupies an area of about 9 acres. It has an oval plan on a north-east/south-west alignment, measuring 317 yards by 186 yards. It is not only the largest of the nine Saxon Shore forts but its walls and towers are the largest of any surviving Roman fort of the period. Its shape is unique among Saxon Shore forts and was presumably dictated by the contours of the peninsula on which it stands.

Architecture

Curtain wall and towers

The Roman west curtain wall

The west side of the wall from the inner bailey

The castle's curtain wall is built on a massive scale, with ramparts and projecting towers still standing up to 27 feet high (and probably about 31 feet high when built) and 14 feet thick at the base. The north, east and west sections of the curtain wall have survived mostly intact, with the exception of one fallen segment of the north wall; the south wall, which would have adjoined sea or marsh, has almost entirely disappeared. It is faced with ironstone and sandstone, though most of the original facing stones have been robbed out over the centuries; the structure visible now consists mostly of the rubble and sandstone core, bound together with mortar. Bonding courses of tiles run horizontally through the wall. An impression of its original appearance can be gleaned from an area in the north wall which has been excavated down to the still-intact foundations, revealing how it was once faced on both sides with small blocks of stone. The wall originally had a stepped appearance with at least two levels of steps on the interior face, though there is no surviving indication of how the garrison reached the top. At the top of the wall the remains of mediæval crenellations can still be seen, which probably replaced Roman originals.

The D-shaped towers along the curtain wall are similar to those of several other Saxon Shore forts, although their placement is somewhat unusual. Because the fort was partly surrounded by marshes and water, which provided natural defences, the Romans economised by only building towers on the more vulnerable north-eastern and far western sectors. The towers were probably used to mount artillery weapons such as catapults and ballistae. Ten towers still survive, though there may originally have been more before the loss of the south wall.

Gates

The Roman west gate

The Roman fort had two principal entrances, one on the east side and the other on the west, guarded by clusters of towers. The west gate covered the landward access via the causeway that linked Pevensey to the mainland. A ditch bisected the causeway, which led up to a rectangular gatehouse with a single arch around 8 feet wide, with a D-shaped tower on each end from which archers could fire along the archway. The main entrance of the Saxon Shore fort at Portchester, built around the same period, had a very similar plan. Nothing now remains of the Roman gatehouse, which was replaced during mediæval times, while only a few stones are left of the mediæval gatehouse.

The east gate wide, still stands; although what is visible now is principally mediæval and 19th century, the Roman original probably did not look much different. A postern gate was set into the north wall next to a section that has now collapsed. It was originally constructed in the form of a narrow curved passageway. Another postern gate may have been set into the collapsed south wall. These suggest that there may have been routes into the fort from across the marshes or access from a harbour, of which no trace remains.

Interior

The interior of the fort was artificially raised by the Romans, using earth dug from the foundation ditch, to bring it up to the level of the projecting step on the back of the wall. No evidence of significant buildings within the fort has been found by excavators. A number of Roman hearths are situated at regular intervals in the centre of the fort's interior, suggesting that they may have been the site of wooden barrack blocks. The buildings are conjectured to have been largely timber-framed wattle and daub structures which have left little trace.

The inner bailey

The curtain wall and moat of the inner bailey

The Normans divided the interior of the old Roman fort into two fortified enclosures, the inner bailey and outer bailey. The inner bailey of the castle was, in effect, a castle within a castle, consisting of a walled fortification with a tower at each corner, surrounded by a moat and with a keep of unusual design at its eastern extremity, adjoining the old Roman curtain wall. The present stone fortifications of the inner bailey date mainly from the 13th and 14th centuries. They replaced the original wood and earth fortifications of the Norman inner bailey, which occupied a much larger area of the Roman fort's interior. Traces of the Norman bailey's ditch and earthen rampart, which stretched right across the interior of the fort, can still be seen today. The inner bailey protected the castle's most important domestic buildings, while the outer bailey was used for buildings of lesser importance such as a granary for the manor of Pevensey.

The inner bailey's moat – which is fed by a spring – was probably over 59 feet wide when first dug and protected a mid-13th century curtain wall, which is still largely intact, that divides the inner and outer baileys. A wooden bridge around 68 feet long linked the inner and outer baileys, though the cost of maintaining it prompted its replacement in 1405 with a stone causeway and drawbridge pit that can still be seen today. The principal entrance to the inner bailey was through the early 13th century gatehouse at the end of the entrance bridge, which had two D-shaped towers flanking a vaulted entrance passage. The towers were built on three levels with arrow slits in each level and basements below, which have survived intact. One of the basements can be reached by way of a spiral staircase; the other can only be accessed through a hole in the tower's floor and may have been used as a prison cell or oubliette. The gatehouse towers were built with open backs, which were probably closed by a wooden wall.

Three other towers still stand on the east, north and south sides of the inner bailey's curtain wall. Built in the mid-13th century, they each had three floors which were accessed through separate entrances on each level. Lighting was provided by arrow-slits, and the upper room in each tower, which was the only one to have a fireplace, was probably used as a lodging area. A latrine was also provided. Only the north tower is known to have been completed; however, its vaulted basement was mostly destroyed around 1317 when the roof and floors of the tower collapsed into it. It is not clear whether the south and east towers were ever completed. An estimate written in 1317 reveals that the towers were thatched, lacking castellations and a proper lead roof, but it is not known whether the work itemised in the estimate was ever carried out. The interiors of the towers were substantially modified in 1940.

The ruined bailey in 1737 (Samuel and Nathaniel Buck)

The keep underwent at least two redesigns in the first half of the 14th century, possibly prompted by damage inflicted in earlier sieges. One of the redesigns involved constructing an adjoining square tower which some have suggested could have been used to mount a catapult; large stone balls, used as catapult ammunition, can still be seen in the inner bailey today. The building was recorded to be dilapidated for much of the 14th century despite repeated repairs, and had fallen into ruin by the 16th century. It was subjected to systematic stone-robbing for centuries; as early as 1591, it was recorded that all the best stones had been "imbeselled and carried away" and that one family had removed no fewer than 677 cartloads of ashlar facing-stone from the keep's walls. A late 18th century engraving shows the remains of the building in a state of collapse and it had completely collapsed by the 1880s. The ruins were largely buried under a great heap of earth and clay that had been deposited sometime in the late mediæval or early modern periods, which was not removed until the 1920s. The reason for the construction of this mound over the ruined keep is unclear, but it may have been related to the brief Elizabethan use of the castle as a gun position.

A number of other buildings once stood in the inner bailey, though only traces now remain. The interior of the curtain wall was lined with timber-framed domestic buildings such as the great hall, which appears to have been totally rebuilt by Edward I in 1301–02 and possibly on other occasions. The arrangement of these buildings is not known but remains of the fireplaces can still be seen built into the curtain wall. Due to the relatively small space available in the inner bailey, the buildings would have been very narrow. The stone foundations of a small chapel are also visible in the inner bailey. The chapel was first documented in the 13th century and was rebuilt in 1302, either on the existing stone foundations or in the outer bailey in a new location. The castle's water supply was provided by a well situated beside the chapel. It has never been fully dug out, but investigations have revealed that it is lined with stone to a depth of around 50 feet and with wood beyond that.

History

Roman fort

Pevensey Castle was established as one of the nine Late Roman forts on the British side of the Saxon Shore, and is named as Anderitum, apparently meaning "great ford", in the Notitia Dignitatum, a list of Roman "dignities" (i.e. public offices) as of the 5th century.

The fort was long thought to have been built in the mid-4th century but an excavation carried out in 1994 found wooden piles underpinning the walls, which were dated to around 290, the time the other Saxon Shore forts were built. The forts were intended to defend Britain against raids from Saxons and other sea-borne Germanic tribes. (An alternative explanation is that Anderitum was built to defend Roman Britain from Rome itself: Carausius, a Roman general who commanded the local fleet, the Classis Britannica, revolted against Rome in 286 and declared himself Emperor of Britain and northern Gaul. He reigned successfully until assassinated in 293 by his treasurer, Allectus, who ruled for three years until he Roman Caesar Constantius Chlorus invaded and seized Britain back for Rome. Coins of both Carausius and Allectus have been discovered buried in the foundations of the fort's walls.

Carausius had inherited an existing system of coastal defence – the earlier Saxon Shore forts – and may have decided to augment it with the construction of Pevensey Castle and its close contemporary, Portus Adurni (Portchester Castle).

Anderitum appears to have been a particularly important link in the Saxon Shore forts, which extended from Hampshire to Norfolk and may have been connected by intermediate watchtowers. The Notitia Dignitatum mentions a fleet that was presumably based there, the Classis Anderidaensis. It would probably have acted in coordination with naval units based on the other side of the Channel to intercept pirate ships passing through the Channel. Like the other Saxon Shore forts, Anderitum's position at a strategic harbour would have enabled the Romans to control access to the shoreline and prevent invaders from penetrating inland. It was linked by a road built in the late Roman period, probably at the same time as the fort.

Anderitum is recorded in the Notitia Dignitatum as the base of the praepositus numeri Abulcorum – an infantry unit or numerus of the limitanei or border forces. It also mentions army and naval units bearing the fort's name in connection with the Vicus Julius, in the Roman army in Gaul and stationed at Lutetia (modern Paris). This suggests that by the time the Notitia was written, the original garrison had been moved to Gaul and replaced with the numerus Abulcorum. The Abulci are mentioned in connection with the field army in Gaul and in the suppression of the rebellion of Magnentius in Pannonia Secunda in 351. It is not known whether their name is a geographical or functional one but their description by Zosimus suggests that they were an elite body of troops, who served both in the field army and, probably in the form of a single detachment, at Anderitum. They may have been foederati, troops raised from allied barbarian tribes and put under the command of a Roman prefect, or perhaps even a single band of warriors with their own leader. Similar numeri were recorded in the Notitia Dignitata as being stationed in other Saxon Shore forts.

The Dark Ages

After the Romans retreated from Britain, a civilian village formed within the walls of the fort, perhaps for protection against Saxon raiders, and its name continued to be used well into the Saxon period: Pevensey was known as Andredadsceaster. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, in 477 a Saxon raid drove local people into the forest of Andreadsleag (which from another reference seems to have stretched over 120 miles from the mouth of the River Lympne to Hampshire). Although the history of the fort at this time is unrecorded, archaeological evidence indicates that its inhabitants had wide-ranging trade links that enabled them to import wares from as far afield as Macedonia and Syria. They may have exported timber and iron from the Sussex Weald to pay for such costly goods.

In 491, the Chronicle records that the Saxons Aelle and Cissa "besieged Andredadsceaster and slew all the inhabitants; there was not even one Briton left there." It is uncertain whether habitation of the fort continued after this event, which is now thought to have happened around 471 rather than the date recorded by the Chronicle (due to a dating error by Gildas, on whose work the Chronicle draws).

By the late Anglo-Saxon period, Pevensey had become a well-established fishing port and producer of salt. The modern village of Pevensey is entirely outside the walls, but the 11th century village appears to have been situated within the Roman fort walls.

At the time of the Norman Conquest the little town here village had a population of 52 burgesses with a harbour and saltworks outside the walls. A civilian settlement within the castle walls evidently persisted for some considerable time after the Conquest, as a licence of 1250 refers to the Roman fortress as the "outer wall of the town".

The Middle Ages

The Roman works at Pevensey had fallen into ruin by the time of the Norman conquest but it still remained a formidable fortification in a very strategic location, offering a natural anchorage near one of the narrowest points of the English Channel. By this time the locality was known as Pevensey, meaning "Pefen's River" (from an Anglo-Saxon personal name).

When William the Conqueror launched his invasion of England by landing at Pevensey Bay on 28 September 1066, his army sheltered for the night in a temporary fortification situated within the old Roman fort. The Normans dug a ditch across the causeway linking the fort with the mainland and made repairs to the Roman walls to strengthen them. The army left for Hastings the following day; a march culminating in the Battle of Hastings.

William's new regime valued Sussex for its strategic position, as both a frontier zone and an essential link between England and Normandy. The five Rapes of Sussex were established, each given to one of William's most important followers and each associated with a major castle, Pevensey being one of them. In 1067 William sailed for Normandy from Pevensey. He also appears to have used the site to distribute lands to his Norman followers, with Pevensey Castle and the surrounding Rape of Penvensey being gifted to his half-brother Robert, Count of Mortain.

Norman herringbone work repairing the Roman east wall

The Roman walls of Pevensey were repaired and two enclosures or baileys were created, divided by a ditch and a palisade constructed from timber. Robert also founded a small borough outside the Roman walls which was recorded as having 110 burgesses and a mint by the time the Domesday Book was compiled in 1086. This may have been the original site of the modern village of Pevensey, but it is equally possible that Robert's borough may have been the foundation site of the village of Westham to the west of the castle, whose layout has many similarities to that of other Norman new towns.

The Norman castle's defences were put to the test for the first time in the Rebellion of 1088, when Norman barons allied with Robert Curthose, Duke of Normandy rebelled against the new king William Rufus. The barons, who were also supported by William the Conqueror's half-brothers Robert of Mortain and Bishop Odo of Bayeux, defended Pevensey Castle against an army led personally by William Rufus. Although the castle's defences were strong enough to resist assaults from land and sea, its defenders were forced to surrender when they ran out of food after six weeks. Robert was allowed to keep the castle but his son William, Count of Mortain was stripped of it, along with his other English estates, after rebelling against Henry I in the early 12th century.

Henry re-granted Pevensey Castle to Gilbert I de l'Aigle but continued to use it for his own purposes, as happened in 1101 when he spent the summer at Pevensey to deter a threatened invasion by his brother, Duke Robert of Normandy. Pevensey was confiscated again by the Crown under King Stephen, with Gilbert's family also losing the rest of their possessions. It was subsequently re-granted to Gilbert de Clare, 1st Earl of Pembroke, who switched his allegiance to Stephen's cousin and rival, the Empress Matilda, in 1141. Although Gilbert changed his loyalty back to Stephen the following year, he was taken hostage by the king in 1147 after a revolt by Gilbert's uncle, Ranulf de Gernon, 4th Earl of Chester. A promise to surrender the Clare family's castles secured Gilbert's release but as soon as he was freed, he too rebelled. In response, Stephen undertook the second siege of Pevensey Castle with a land and sea blockade. The castle once again proved impervious to direct assault but the garrison was eventually starved out.

The stump of the 13th century keep

Gilbert's disloyalty led to the Crown's seizing the castle again and taking on the burden of repairing and maintaining it. The expenditure was recorded in still-surviving Treasury accounts which provide a valuable insight into the development of the castle during the later mediæval period. In the 1180s the defences appear to have been a combination of stone walls (the old Roman structure) with Norman modifications, plus earthworks and timber palisades. They were maintained in part by some of the local manors, which were under a feudal obligation called heckage that required them to repair and keep up sections of the palisades.

Pevensey Castle appears to have acquired its first major new stone buildings in the 1190s. Their construction may be indicated by a series of substantial payments for works at the castle during the reign of Richard I. The keep and gatehouse may have been constructed under Richard, though mentions from 1130 of "the Tower of Pevensey" suggest that there may have been an earlier stone building on the site, or that the keep was constructed at this earlier date. Whenever it was built, it was probably destroyed by about 1216 when Richard's successor John fought off an invasion led by Prince Louis of France. The French invasion during the First Barons' War forced John to order the slighting of Pevensey Castle, as he did not have enough men to garrison it and could not afford it to fall into French hands.

A subsequent rebuilding saw the timber palisades of the inner bailey replaced by stone walls and towers. Exactly when this happened is unclear, but it may have been under Peter of Savoy, the Earl of Richmond, who was granted the castle by Henry III in 1246. There is no record of the rebuilding but in 1254 Peter ended the feudal requirement to maintain the palisades and replaced it with cash payments. This probably reflected the replacement of the palisades with the stone walls and towers visible today. The castle faced a lengthy siege only a decade later during the Second Barons' War from the rebel baron Simon de Montfort, 6th Earl of Leicester, following Henry's defeat in the Battle of Lewes. Defeated members of the royalist army fled to Pevensey, pursued by de Montford's forces, but the garrison refused an invitation to surrender and endured over a year of besiegement. Their adversaries were unable to stop supplies reaching the castle despite digging a ditch to cut it off from the mainland; its garrison raided the surrounding countryside and sought to obtain fresh supplies of men and weapons by sea in December 1264. The costly and ineffective siege was eventually lifted in July 1265. It caused significant damage to the castle, with the Roman wall toppled on the south side. The parish churches at Pevensey and Westham also suffered damage, which the attackers may have caused in using them as siege castles (temporary fortresses and artillery platforms).

Peter continued to control Pevensey Castle after de Montford's defeat and death at the Battle of Evesham in August 1265. It became Crown property after Peter's death, when Henry III's queen Eleanor of Provence acquired the castle. It remained with the Crown for another century under the control of several queens consort, including Edward II's wife Isabella and Edward III's wife Philippa, who were responsible for appointing the castle's Constables. By this time, the silting of Pevensey Bay was evidently having an effect on the garrison's ability to resupply via the sea. Accounts from 1288 indicate that seaborne access was becoming increasingly difficult, causing problems in unloading goods. However, it continued to play a significant role in the defence of the south coast against French raids and was occupied through much of the 14th century by a garrison consisting of between twenty and thirty men. These usually comprised ten men-at-arms, twenty archers and a watchman, who were supplied with provisions and armour. The Duke of Lancaster, John of Gaunt, refused to garrison it in 1377 five years after he took possession of the castle, asserting that he was wealthy enough to rebuild it if a French attack destroyed it. His actions attracted such public hostility the during the Peasants' Revolt of 1381 a mob attacked the castle, burnt its court rolls and abused the steward.

Catapult or trebuchet ammunition at Pevensey

The castle underwent repeated repair work during the 14th century, though poor maintenance and corruption appears to have caused its fabric to deteriorate rapidly. The main buildings of the inner bailey were totally reconstructed in 1301 but were reported to be in a ruinous condition only five years later. The castle's constable, Roger de Levelande, was accused of illicitly asset-stripping the castle by breaking up and selling the wooden bridge that connected it to the mainland. Some "wardens" were also accused of burning the timbers of a disused barn. It was estimated that the resulting damage and the ongoing structural deterioration to the curtain wall would cost over £1,000 to repair. Around 1325, the keep was partly demolished and rebuilt. It is possible that by this time the Roman curtain wall was in such a poor state that it was no longer considered part of the castle defences. Various late 13th and early 14th century records describe how sections of the wall had fallen down or been destroyed in sieges. The collapse of the wall on the north-west side is thought to have occurred by no later than the middle of the 13th century, and this event may have made the outer bailey indefensible thereafter.

Pevensey Castle was besieged again for the fourth and last time in its history in 1399. By this time it was controlled by Sir John Pelham, one of Gaunt's retainers, who had been appointed to the Constableship in 1394. Pelham supported Gaunt's son, Henry Bolingbroke in his rebellion against King Richard II. The king's forces besieged the castle, trapping Pelham and the garrison inside. In a letter sent to Bolingbroke, Pelham wrote:

My dear Lord ... if it please you to know of my affairs, I am here bylaid in manner of a siege, with the counties of Sussex, Surrey and a great part of Kent, so that I may not out, nor no vitals get me without much difficulty. Wherefore my dear may it please you, by the advice of your wise council, to give remedy to the salvation of your castle, and withstand the malice of the shire ... Farewell my dear Lord, the Holy Trinity keep you from your enemies, and soon send me good tidings of you. Written at Pevensey in the Castle, on Saint Jacob day last past. By ever your own poor, J. Pelham

The siege failed, Henry Bolinbroke was crowned as King Henry IV and the new king granted the Castle and Honour of Pevensey to Pelham as a reward for his loyalty. The Lancastrian kings subsequently used the castle as a prison for high-ranking nobles. Its prisoners included King James I of Scotland, who was captured while en route to France in 1405, and Edward of Norwich, 2nd Duke of York, who was held at Pevensey after becoming involved in a plot against Henry IV. On his death, Edward bestowed £20 in his will to Thomas Playsted, apparently one of his jailers, "for the kindness he showed me when I was in ward at Pevensey." Henry V imprisoned his step-mother, Joan of Navarre, here on charges of plotting to kill him through witchcraft; she was released in 1422 after being held at Pevensey for three years. When the Tudor dynasty ascended the throne the castle was abandoned, and by 1573 it was recorded as being in ruins.

The modern age

Elizabethan cannon at Pevensey Castle, mounted on a replica carriage

Second World War machine-gun post incorporated into Pevensey Castle's east wall

Elizabeth I ordered the castle's remains to be "utterlye raysed", but her order was not enforced and it remained standing. In 1587, the castle was reoccupied – though not rebuilt – to serve as a gun position against the threat of a Spanish invasion. A U-shaped earth emplacement was built in the outer bailey, facing south over the collapsed section of the Roman wall. Two iron demi-culverin cannons were installed and were in place at the time of the Spanish Armada in 1588, although the Armada failed and they were never used in anger. One of the guns, marked with a Tudor rose and the initials E.R. (Elizabeth Regina), has been preserved and can be seen in the inner bailey of the castle mounted on a replica carriage. Although the cannon was recorded at the time as being only "of small value" it is now one of only a few cast-iron cannons to have survived from the Elizabethan period. It was almost certainly manufactured locally in the Sussex Weald.

Pevensey Castle remained abandoned and crumbling from the end of the 16th century to the first quarter of the 20th. It was nearly demolished during the period of the Commonwealth in the 17th century when Oliver Cromwell's Parliamentary Commissioners sold it for £40 to a builder, John Warr of Westminster, who planned to quarry it for its stones. Very little work took place, however, and the Crown reacquired the castle in 1660. It was restored to the possession of the Pelham family, until in 1730 the Duke of Newcastle resigned it to Spencer Compton, 1st Earl of Wilmington. It was subsequently acquired by the House of Cavendish. In 1925 its last private owner, the 9th Duke of Devonshire, gave the castle to the state as a historic monument and it underwent repairs and some reconstruction under the supervision of the Ministry of Works.

The castle acquired a fresh military significance in 1940 when Pevensey's exposed shoreline and flat hinterland became a possible target area for a German invasion after the fall of France. It was reoccupied by the military for the first time in over 400 years, with British and Canadian troops garrisoning it from May 1940, and Americans later. The towers of the inner bailey were converted into troop accommodation by lining the walls with bricks and laying wooden floors. New perimeter defences were constructed; machine-gun posts were built into the walls, disguised to look like part of the original structure, and an anti-tank blockhouse was built in the entrance of the Roman west gate. The main and postern gates of the inner bailey were blocked by concrete and brick walls, and anti-tank cubes were installed along the areas where the Roman curtain wall had collapsed. The main concern was that an invader could have captured the castle and used its interior as a strongpoint. It was intended that the new defensive measures at the castle would make it "100% tank-proof" and that an enemy would not be able to approach within 2000 yards of it. The United States Army Air Corps also used it as a radio direction centre from early 1944.

In 1945 the castle was returned to civilian control. The blockhouse and obstructions were demolished but it was decided to leave the machine-gun posts in place to illustrate the most recent chapter in the castle's history. The castle is now managed by English Heritage and is open to the public.

Outside links

("Wikimedia Commons" has material about Pevensey Castle)

• Pevensey Castle – English Heritage