page_title: Camber Castle
section_title: Redeveloped concentric design, 1542–43
hierarchical_section_title: Camber Castle / History / 16th – 17th centuries / Redeveloped concentric design, 1542–43
caption_attribution_description: English: An aerial photograph of Camber Castle.This is a photo of listed building number 1234738.
context_page_description: Camber Castle, also known formerly as Winchelsea Castle, is a 16th-century Device Fort, built near Rye by King Henry VIII to protect the Sussex coast of England against French attack. The first fortification on the site was a small, round artillery tower, constructed by Henry between 1512 and 1514, overlooking the Camber anchorage and the entrance to Rye Harbour. In 1539, increasing tensions with France encouraged Henry to rethink his coastal defence plans, and Camber Castle was rebuilt and extended over the next year under the direction of the Moravian engineer, Stefan von Haschenperg. The results were considered unsatisfactory and further work was carried out from 1542 to 1543, at great expense, to rectify the problems. The result was a large, concentric artillery fort, with a central keep, surrounded by four circular bastions and a circular entrance bastion, built from stone and brick.
  The finished castle was initially equipped with 28 brass and iron artillery guns and a garrison of 28 men, commanded by a captain. It may have seen service in 1545 when a French fleet attacked the coast, but its operational value was short lived.
context_section_description: As a result of the problems with the original design, in summer 1542 work recommenced on the castle, well after the initial invasion scare was over, lasting until August 1543. The decision to rectify the problems with the castle may have been taken by King Henry himself. Oxenbridge appears to have stayed on as the pay master and acted as the master of the works, with von Haschenperg remaining in his role as engineer almost until the end of the project, despite the difficulties with his earlier work. The cost of the second phase of work was much higher than the first, around £10,000.
  The design was rather different to von Haschenperg's first castle. The keep and the stirrup towers were raised in height, the level of the floors elevated, the curtain wall was strengthened, the old bastions entirely removed and four new, larger bastions added in their place, while the older foreworks around the castle were demolished. The keep's flat roof was altered to a pitched design, and the guns that it had supported moved into the outlying bastions. Although the size of the castle had slightly decreased, the new design had much more domestic space available for the garrison.
  In practice, even the revised design ignored the acute-angled bastions which had been introduced in Europe, the round towers creating numerous patches of dead ground around the castle into which its guns could not fire; the high walls presented a greater target, the internal design was complicated and it remained difficult to move around inside the fort. Indeed, the historian Peter Harrington describes the final design as even "more archaic than its predecessor". Chute's role was extended to become the Keeper and Captain of Camber, and the Keeper of the Waters of Camber and Puddle in January 1544, for which he was paid two shillings a day. Haschenperg left England in disgrace in 1544, facing complaints that he was "a man who will pretend more knowledge than he hath indeed".
  The bulk of the stone for the two phases of the project was acquired by demolishing monastic buildings in Winchelsea, and by purchasing it from the nearby Fairlight and Hastings quarries. Higher quality stone was bought from Mersham in Hampshire, and from various suppliers in Normandy. Timber was acquired from Udimore, Appledore and Knell, the latter two lumber-felling operations being run directly by the Camber project team. Chalk was brought from Dover to manufacture lime, and at least 16,000 bricks initially purchased to make the necessary kilns, with possibly over 500,000 further bricks being manufactured locally as the work progressed. Steel, iron and tiles were bought locally in Sussex, along with a 10 metric tons (9.8 long tons; 11 short tons) crane for the project's quay.
caption: The castle's concentric design seen from the air
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