East and West Blockhouses

East and West Blockhouses
Pembrokeshire
Remains of the East Blockhouse
Type:	Device Fort
Location
Grid reference:	SM84120277
Location:	51°40’56"N, 5°7’27"W
Village:	Angle and Dale
History
Key events:	Second World War
Information
Condition:	East Blockhouse ruined West Blockhouse destroyed

The East and West Blockhouses were Device Forts built by King Henry VIII in 1539 to protect the harbour of Milford Haven in Pembrokeshire. The two blockhouses were positioned on either side of the Milford Haven Waterway in the villages of Angle and Dale respectively, overlooking the sea. The East Blockhouse was never completed, but the remains were reused as a defensive site in the Second World War. The West Blockhouse was described by contemporaries as forming a round tower with gunports, but it was demolished when West Blockhouse Fort was built on the same site in the 19th century.

Construction

The two blockhouses were built as a consequence of an invasion threat from France and the Holy Roman Empire in the final years of the reign of King Henry VIII. Henry issued an order, called a "device", in 1539, giving instructions for the "defence of the realm in time of invasion" and the construction of forts along the coastline. Soon afterwards work began on the East Blockhouse in the village of Angle. Angle overlooked the mouth of Milford Haven harbour in Pembrokeshire; another fortification, the West Blockhouse, was built just across the other side of the Milford Haven Waterway at Dale.

The East Blockhouse was constructed on a narrow headland 115 feet above the sea; the Elizabethan historian George Owen described the building as having been intended to be a "rounde turrett", and the physical remains in the 20th century comprised a stone building 24 feet by 13 feet, with a stone enclosure to the north and a subsidiary building 50 feet away from the main site on the south-east side. The construction work was never completed and by 1546 the walls had begun to collapse. According to Owen, the West Blockhouse was a round tower, 20 feet in diameter, with eight gunports.

Later use

Ruins of the East Blockhouse in 1881

After peace was achieved with France in 1558, military attention shifted towards the Spanish threat to the increasingly prosperous south-west side of England. Tensions with Spain grew and invasion appeared likely in 1589, resulting in royal permission being given to reuse the stonework from the East Blockhouse for new coastal defences, but this work was not carried out. The fort continued to decay until the 20th century. With the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, the East Blockhouse was adapted for use by the military. The interior was cleared out and a shed was built in one corner. A slit trench was dug on the north side of the building, a rifle embrasure formed on the east side of the building, and a machine-gun position was dug out and protected with sandbags outside it.

Land erosion has damaged the East Blockhouse site; the north wall collapsed before 1975, and between 2010 and 2011 there was another major landslip. An archaeological survey of the blockhouse, funded by the Welsh heritage agency Cadw, took place in 2011. The East Blockhouse is the only such defensive structure to survive in Wales and is protected under UK law as a scheduled monument.

The West Blockhouse was demolished in the 19th century, when West Blockhouse Fort was built on the same site, and there are no visible remains.

References

• Biddle, Martin; Hiller, Jonathon; Scott, Ian; Streeten, Anthony (2001). Henry VIII's Coastal Artillery Fort at Camber Castle, Rye, East Sussex: An Archaeological Structural and Historical Investigation. Oxford: Oxbow Books. ISBN 0904220230. 
• Crane, P. (2012). East Blockhouse, Angle: Archaeological Excavation, July 2011. Carmarthan: Dyfed Archaeological Trust. 
• Hale, J. R. (1983). Renaissance War Studies. London: Hambledon Press. ISBN 0907628176. 
• Harrington, Peter (2007). The Castles of Henry VIII. Oxford: Osprey Publishing. ISBN 9781472803801. 
• King, D. J. Cathcart (1991). The Castle in England and Wales: An Interpretative History. London: Routledge Press. ISBN 9780415003506. 
• Morley, B. M. (1976). Henry VIII and the Development of Coastal Defence. London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office. ISBN 0116707771. 
• Pattison, Paul (2009). Pendennis Castle and St Mawes Castle. London: English Heritage. ISBN 9781850747239. 
• Saunders, Andrew (1989). Fortress Britain: Artillery Fortifications in the British Isles and Ireland. Liphook: Beaufort. ISBN 1855120003. 
• Thompson, M. W. (1987). The Decline of the Castle. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 1854226088. 
• Walton, Steven A. (2010). "State Building Through Building for the State: Foreign and Domestic Expertise in Tudor Fortification". Osiris 25 (1): 66–84. doi:10.1086/657263.