Corfe Castle
Corfe Castle, midway between Wareham and Swanage, is one of the most dramatic of English ruins. It stands on an isolated hill which forms part of the Purbeck range, towering over the picturesque village of the same name. The late Saxon kings had a palace here and it was outside the gates that Edward the Martyr was murdered in a family coup that put Ethelred the Unready on the throne.
The site allowed for two baileys of unequal size flanking a steep-sided summit, which forms a natural motte. The ring work known as The Rings, a quarter mile to the southwest is probably the siege fort of Matilda. Edward II was held captive here for a while between his abdication and murder. After that, the castle was seldom visited by its royal owners and fell into decay.
The marvel of Corfe Castle is the way in which the masonry has held together despite the most determined attempts to blow it up. Walls and towers have bowed outwards, even slid down the hillside, but a great deal stands nevertheless. The approach from the village is through a wide outer gate with rounded flanking towers. This is Edward I’s only contribution to the castle.
It leads into the large outer bailey, its curtain flanked by seven half-round bastions which are closely spaced on the southwest where the terrain is most vulnerable. The bailey ascends to another round-towered gatehouse, still an impressive structure despite having split into two halves during the slighting. A stairway from the gatehouse leads upward in the thickness of a wing-wall to the keep on the summit. Otherwise, the route to the top involves passing through the West Bailey, which was walled by King John. Its wall converge to a western point, guarded by the octagonal Butavant Tower, which has been destroyed to its foundation.
Dartmouth Castle
Dartmouth, on the beautiful estuary of the River Dart, was a flourishing port from the twelfth century. When the Hundred Year War made legitimate trading difficult, the inhabitants turned to piracy to boost their profits. Their unfortunate targets were the ports across the Channel. In 1404, the Bretons land in force and attempted to sack the town in revenge, but the inhabitants drove them off with great loss to themselves. According to French sources a second attempt was more successful. Dartmouth Castle is actually a mile southeast of the town, at a point where the estuary narrows.
A fortification first rose here about 1388 in response to the threat of invasion from France. It was built at the instigation of the mayor, John Hawley, and is interesting as the earliest example of a fort built by a municipal authority as opposed to the private castle of an individual. It was a simple affair, consisting of a curtain with circular towns cutting off the landward approach to the headland. A tall piece of curtain and one shattered tower can be seen on the high ground overlooking the defenses. In view of the primitive artillery of the day it is difficult to see how this fortification could have interfered with any ships. It was also overlooked by much higher ground. Perhaps for these reasons it soon fell into disuse.
The tower, which now forms the focal point of the castle crowns the rocks on the edge of the headland. It looks like two connected towers, one square and one oval. In fact, the original design was for a freestanding oval tower and the most prominent square portion is an afterthought, but there is no internal division between the two. The splayed gun ports provided a degree of flexibility for cannon fire, which was hitherto unknown. They lie in the rock-cut basement.