Castles of Cornwall

I had a week in Cornwall this year in early June, and it's a fantastic place, we were gifted with good weather as well which allowed us to get out and about a lot, inevitably we visited many historic sites including several castles which I can't resist showing a few pics of.

The first castle we visited was Tintagel castle, legendary birthplace of King Arthur.  I've been here before, but I was about 8 and I had fond, but vague memories of the place.  A return visit didn't disappoint.  There isn't a huge amount of the castle itself left, but Tintagel Head is a stunningly beautiful location, with great views, layers and layers of history and a lovely cove with some interesting caves that are easy to explore. It wasn't cheap, but it was well worth it.

The next day we visited St Catherines Castle at Fowey.  This is a small example of one of Henry VIII's device forts, it's just a tower and a coupe of gun implacements, however it's free to visit and gives great views over Fowey Harbour.

As we were looking out across the sea my friend noticed a type 45 destroyer on the horizon, it circled round for a bit before heading off.  A lucky sighting that added a lot to a great site.

The next day and another castle, this time Restormel Castle, which very much looks like what I imagine a 'standard' castle would look like, even if just the keep remains.  The keep was of course once surrounded by a much larger castle and it was at one point the administrative centre of the whole of cornwall.

The final castle of the trip was another Henrician Device Fort, this time at St Mawes which with it's twin Pendennis (which I visited a few years ago but never got around to posting about) guard Falmouth.  We didn't go inside this one as there didn't seem to be a lot there for the price and we were a bit short on time.

Leiston Abbey Chapel

I spent last Saturday walking round the spectacular RSPB reserve at Minsmere in Suffolk, from a lot of the hides I could see some mysterious ruins in the background, as it happened the footpath back to the campsite happened to go straight past them.

As I approached the ruins of the 12th century chapel (all that's left of a once much larger abbey) actually turned out to be somewhat smaller than they looked from across the reserve.  But then as we got very close they suddenly got a lot more interesting, as I noticed what seemed to be a pillbox built inside!  The information board confirmed my suspicions this was in fact a WW2 pillbox built inside a scheduled ancient monument.  I've never seen anything quite like it.

The rest of the abbey got pulled down in the 14th century and the stone moved three miles or so down the road to a new Leiston Abbey which is currently a free to access English Heritage property.  We visited this larger and more impressive ruin as well (pic below), but it didn't have the same charm as the little pillbox in the ruin.

The Ruins of Houghton House

 

 

 

A slightly different post than normal today, nothing to do with minis or wargaming and whilst I've featured my visits to historic sites before they've always had a military link to some sort, which then of course links into the wargaming.  Todays site is an impressive ruin of an old stately home.

 

Up on the hill behind the village where I live there is a ruined house, it dominates the ridge and commands excellent views over the Marston Vale in central Bedfordshire.  It is also an excellent walk from my house through hay meadows and an ancient woodland that takes about an hour, which is just about right for an afternoon stroll.  The ruins are in the care of English Heritage and are freely accessible in the hours of daylight.  I took a walk up there last week, and was quite pleased with the photos that I managed to come back with.

 

A brief history then; Houghton House was built in 1615 for the Countess of Pembroke Mary Sidney, after her death it passed to the Earls of Elgin and then in 1738 to the Dukes of Bedford who used it as a hunting lodge until around 1800 when they stripped the house of its furnishings and roof and left it to decay.  It's claim to fame is as inpsiration for the 'House Beautiful' at the top of the 'Hill Difficulty' in John Bunyan's once popular christian allegory 'the Pilgrims Progress'.

 

 

Isle of Wight Costal Defenses - The Needles Batteries, Bembridge Fort & Others

In Victorian times the Isle of Wight (and the whole area around the Solent) was heavily fortified by the Palmerston Government.  This wasn't because they were that concerned with the island in itself, but it's capture would seriously endanger the Royal Navy's home base at Portsmouth.  The same logic of course applies to defending the entrances to the Solent and the Isle of Wight proved to be the ideal place to situate guns to do this.  On my recent trip to the island we couldn't help but visit several of the sites of these defences.

The first evidence of these defences were the sea forts in the Solent that I featured briefly in a previous post, a couple of days later though we made our first dedicated trip and this was to the New and Old Batteries at the Needles.

Entrance to the Needles old battery

 

The needles are of course THE iconic isle of wight location and there was no way we could go on holiday to the island and not visit them, however the more interesting part of the trip was the battery.  There is actually two battery's at the needles, the old battery and the new battery.  The old battery is nearly complete and overlooks the needles themselves.

The parade ground of the needles old battery

The site consists of a parade ground with one battery (originally 5 guns, now 2) which faces to the north to guard against any enemy ships attempting to enter the solent, an observation tower and a bunch of magazines and other buildings that the picture above was taken from on top of.  There used to be other buildings in the parade ground, the outlines of some of which can still be seen.  One of the coolest parts is a small tunnel that goes down from the parade ground to an searchlight post that overlooks the needles.  It's an interesting site, but a little pricey considering it's so small and that you have to pay for parking separately as the car park is owned by someone else, I'd still recommend it overall.

The Needles New Battery

Also at the needles site is the Needles New Battery, there is nowhere near as much to this site, a single large low concrete structure to hold the guns (all gone), however it's free to look at and in the basement there is an interesting exhibition on the British space program which used the area around the Needles as a test area for rockets.

Hurst castle & Fort Albert guarding the western approach to Portsmouth (click for a bigger image)

There were several observation huts around the Needles Old Battery and one of these gave this fantastic view of Hurst Castle on the mainland (my favourite castle to visit actually) and fort albert on the isle of wight.  So even if you got past the needles you were a long way from being able to hit Portsmouth.

The Entrance to Bembridge Fort.

The other major site we visited was the Bembridge Land Fort, this is owned by the national trust (like the Needles batteries actually) and isn't open properly to the public as its in rather a poor state and actually has a chemical factory in it, however once a week the NT do open up for guided behind the scenes tours at the price of £3.50.  If you have an interest in military history and are on the Isle of Wight I can't recommend this enough.  The fort is on top of Bembridge down, which is on the other side of the island to the Needles.  Whilst Bembridge mounted eight large guns these weren't for attacking ships but for controlling the area and the east coast of the Isle of wight, in the victorian era it acted as a command centre for all the batteries and forts along the east coast of the isle of wight and would have served as a last refuge if these costal defences were attacked and taken.

Caponier Outside and Inside

 

The guided tour takes you into the heart of the fort down dark tunnels and into basement magazines, there is still rubbish everywhere and on occasion you need to use a torch to see where you are going.  It's a very different way to see a historical site than the usual sanitized version.

 

Interior of Bembridge Fort

Bembridge was occupied in both world wars and was particularly busy in WW2 which saw all three services using the fort for various observation and training purposes.  after WW2 the fort was leased out to be used as a factory, some of the buildings you can see in the pic above.

Fort Victoria

If you managed to sail down the Solent past the Needles and then through the narrow gap defended by Hurst castle and fort Albert you would then have to get past the guns of Fort Victoria.  Nowadays only the casemates remain the rest of the building having been demolished.  The casemates now house a variety of 'attractions' including a planetarium, an aquarium and a tea-shop.  You can walk along the top of the casemates and this gives a great view along the Solent.

Thumbs Up To The Isle Of Wight

I've been away on holiday for the last week in my first ever trip to the Isle of Wight.  It's a fantastic place and we had a great time.  The holiday was split pretty much half and half between history and natural history, and there will be a couple of posts in the next few weeks focusing on some of the military history sites I visited and can recommend.

The Hoy Monument raised to commemorate The visit of tsar Alexander to Britain in 1814, later inscribed with a dedication to those that fought at Innkerman in the Crimean war.

Before we even got on the ferry we had a couple of hours to take a walk around Portsmouth (where I've been before) and as well as taking a look at the Warrior and Victory, HMS Illustrious and HMS Defender were in dock.

 

HMS Warrior

 

 

HMS Illustrious

 

 

HMS Defender

We then took a walk round the old walled city including the square and round towers that formed part of the defences of Portsmouth harbour.  It's a really interesting place for a walk and there are a lot of old (and current of course, but they don't let you look at them!) military sites in the immediate area.  I thought the sea forts out in the solent looked particulary cool.

The Round & Square Towers defending Portsmouth

 

 

Sea forts In The Solent

All that was before we'd even got on the ferry and started the holiday properly!

I even came home with a few new toys, a silly cheap plastic Mig kit from grafix and a set of Tudor pewter figures (bought at Carisbrooke castle).  I've been collecting those pewter figures they sell at historic sites since I was about 5 and have a quite large collection now (see below), it's normally the same 5 romans and 5 knights at every site that they've been making my entire life, it was nice to be able to add something slightly different.  The Tudors came with a basic little board game as well, we didn't get a chance to play it, but it looked like it would be playable if not overly engrossing.

New toys

 

 

Pewter Tudors

 

 

Yes, yet another collection of toy soldiers!

Bovington Tank Museum

The weekend of the great storm found me in Dorset and finally making a long overdue first ever trip to the tank Museum at Bovington.  I'm sure many of my readers have been there themselves, but to those that haven't you really should make the effort, it's a fantastic place.

Bovington is the museum of the Royal tank regiment and is (according to Wikipedia) the largest collection of tanks in the world.  the main building consists of 4 areas, the tank story, the WWI experience, the discovery zone and Battlegroup Afghanistan.

The best and most important hall is 'the tank story' which traces the history of the tank all the way from 'little willie' in 1915 upto the modern day.  It includes tanks from WW1 (a mark II, a whippet, and a FT-17) before moving into the interwar period and then of course into WW2.  The WW2 section includes the worlds last surviving working Tiger tank.  There was a chap doing maintenance and he let us climb up on top of the tank to have  look at the engine and inside the turret, which was a nice surprise.  There is also some cold war tanks and a couple of modern ones.  It's quite open plan and it's well done with lots of great information about the vehicles and about the development of the tank in general.  It's about as good an overview of the subject as you could get from a gallery.

Next we headed into the WWI hall.  It starts off with a mock up of a trench scene, starting in a damaged town, then a British trench and then onto a German one.  Although it was interesting seeing the differences between the British and German set-ups I have to admit I'm not a fan of these fake trenches that seem to be popular nowadays, there's no way they can really give an impression of the trenches, but perhaps I'm in the minority here and other people get something from them.  After the mock up there is a gallery of WWI tanks, which I absolutely loved!  It contains 5 different varieties of British heavy tanks (two of which you can go inside) and a German A7V.

The Discovery Zone is a very large area crammed full of tanks and armoured vehicles, and I do mean crammed.   Mostly WW2 tanks, but also a good selection of postwar main battle tanks as well.  Some of the highlights included a Centurion cut in half and a King Tiger, but there's just so much there it's difficult to pick out individual tanks.  One tank that did really strike me though was the TOG II, an absolutely massive British tank prototype from WW2 that is heavier than any of the later MTB's.

The last area is Battlegroup Afghanistan, it's smaller than the other areas and gives a look at the vehicles and conditions from the recent war in Afghanistan.  Again it's very well done, the mock-up camp and multimedia information make it a nice little addition to the museum.

Across the car park is the vehicle conservation centre which is a large hanger which houses the overspill from the collection, tanks and armoured vehicles not on display from the main hall in varying conditions.  You can't get down in amongst them but can only view them from up on a viewing platform.  It's an impressive sight and hopefully one day they'll be able to renovate and display them all properly.

And finally I was also really impressed with the shop, lots of interesting books and a fantastic range of model kits, some manufacturers and ranges that I wasn't even aware of.  It was perhaps inevitable that I came away with a model tank, which will be appearing here in the very near future.