Devil’s Point Artillery Tower is a blockhouse, built between 1537 and 1539 to protect Plymouth Harbour in Devon.
History
In 1533 Henry broke with Pope Paul III in order to annul the long-standing marriage to his wife, Catherine of Aragon, and remarry. Catherine was the aunt of King Charles V of Spain, who took the annulment as a personal insult. As a consequence, France and the Empire declared an alliance against Henry in 1538, and the Pope encouraged the two countries to attack England. An invasion of England now appeared certain; that summer Henry made a personal inspection of some of his coastal defences, which had recently been mapped and surveyed: he appeared determined to make substantial, urgent improvements.
Henry VIII gave instructions through Parliament in 1539 that new defences were to be built along the coasts of England, beginning a major programme of work that would continue until 1547. The order was known as a “device”, which meant a documented plan, instruction or schema, leading to the fortifications later becoming known as the “Device Forts”. The initial instructions for the “defence of the realm in time of invasion” concerned building forts along the southern coastline of England, as well as making improvements to the defences of the towns of Calais and Guisnes in France, then controlled by Henry’s forces. Commissioners were also to be sent out across south-west and south-east England to inspect the current defences and to propose sites for new ones.
The Devil’s Point Artillery Tower was built by the local Edgcumbe family between 1537 and 1539, to protect the River Tamar and the entrance to Plymouth Harbour. It comprised a one-storey, octagonal stone blockhouse, built from granite rubble and ashlar, with four square gunports overlooking the sea.
In 1902, a machine gun position was probably mounted on the site to protect the harbour boom. The site is protected under UK law as a Schedule Monument and a Grade II listed building.
Bibliography
- Colvin, H. M.; Ransome, D. R.; Summerson (1982). The History of the King’s Works, Volume 4: 1485-1660, Part 2. London, UK: HMSO. ISBN 0116708328.
- Hale, John R. (1983). Renaissance War Studies. London, UK: Hambledon Press. ISBN 0907628176.
- Harrington, Peter (2007). The Castles of Henry VIII. Oxford, UK: Osprey Publishing. ISBN 9781472803801.
- Morley, B. M. (1976). Henry VIII and the Development of Coastal Defence. London, UK: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office. ISBN 0116707771.
Attribution
The text of this page is licensed under under CC BY-NC 2.0.
Photographs on this page are drawn from the Flickr website, as of 1 October 2018, and attributed and licensed as follows: “Up the Tamar“, author Mark Robinson, released under CC BY-NC 2.0.