page_title: St Mawes Castle
section_title: Batteries and auxiliary buildings
hierarchical_section_title: St Mawes Castle / Architecture / Batteries and auxiliary buildings
caption_attribution_description: English: The Napoleonic magazine at St Mawes Castle, Cornwall, below the tudor castle.
context_page_description: St Mawes Castle is an artillery fort constructed by Henry VIII near Falmouth, Cornwall, between 1540 and 1542. It formed part of the King's Device programme to protect against invasion from France and the Holy Roman Empire, and defended the Carrick Roads waterway at the mouth of the River Fal. The castle was built under the direction of Thomas Treffry to a clover leaf design, with a four-storey central tower and three protruding, round bastions that formed gun platforms. It was initially armed with 19 artillery pieces, intended for use against enemy shipping, operating in partnership with its sister castle of Pendennis on the other side of the estuary. During the English Civil War, St Mawes was held by Royalist supporters of King Charles I, but surrendered to a Parliamentary army in 1646 in the final phase of the conflict.
  The castle continued in use as a fort through the 18th and 19th centuries. In the early 1850s, fears of a fresh conflict with France, combined with changes in military technology, led to the redevelopment of the fortification.
context_section_description: Gun batteries and other auxiliary buildings stretch across the St Mawes Castle site. Above the Henrician castle is the 12-pounder quick-firing high-level battery, dating from the start of the 20th century. Its four concrete platforms and earth parapets have survived, along with an underground magazine just behind the site. A small bungalow from this period at the entrance to the battery is still in use, serving as the English Heritage custodian's house. Alongside the Henrician castle is the Engine House, approximately 41 feet (12 m) square and dating from around 1902. It originally contained an internal combustion engine, generating power for the castle's searchlights, but was later converted into a storeroom.
  Beneath the Henrician castle is a complex of artillery positions, cut out of the rock from around 1854 onwards, and collectively known as the Grand Sea Battery. The Grand Sea Battery was served by a 19th-century magazine for holding gunpowder, approximately 35 by 18 feet (10.7 by 5.5 m) with stone walls and bomb-proof brick roof, topped with turf to help to protect against incoming shells. For many years the magazine was protected by an additional concrete fortification, but this was removed in 1970. There are two gun platforms along the west and east sides of the complex, 110 feet (34 m) and 80 feet (24 m) across respectively and known as the Lower Gun Battery. The current design of the western platform dates from the 1890s, with two raised concrete platforms for rotating guns and a brick-vaulted magazine just behind the battery. The eastern platform has pivots and racers for mounting four traversing gun carriages, one of which now houses a 12-pound smooth-bore artillery piece dating from 1815, mounted on a replica carriage.
  Just below the Grand Sea Battery is the 16th-century blockhouse, positioned by the water's edge, 160 feet (49 m) from the Henrician castle. The blockhouse is semi-circular in shape, with 56 feet (17 m) wide with 9.8-foot (3 m) thick stone walls facing the sea, but much thinner walls to the rear. It originally had four gunports, one of which has since been blocked up, along with an upper gun platform and battlements. The upper storey was later destroyed to turn it into a solid gun platform, although this has since been re-excavated. Beside the blockhouse are the foundations of four searchlight emplacements dating from the Second World War.
  To the west of the Grand Sea Battery are landscaped gardens, built on top of earlier gun positions along the site. Five 19th-century smooth-bore guns from the Napoleonic period are on display, forming a saluting battery. Beyond the gardens is the site of the Second World War 6 pounder battery, but little now remains of this position.
caption: 19th-century magazine in the Grand Sea Battery
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