Our Blog - August 2025 - England trip - Upnor Castle

Sitting on the Medway River, Upnor Castle is an Elizabethan artillery fort that was built between 1559 and 1567. It is a little bit downriver from the Chatham Dockyard, at one time a key naval facility. The fort was intended to protect both the dockyard and ships of the Royal Navy anchored on the Medway River. Elizabeth I ordered the fort constructed during a time with high tensions with Spain. By 1603, it had 20 guns of various sizes plus another 11 guns on 2 nearby towers.

There was only 1 bit of action seen here, during the Dutch Raid on the Medway in June 1667. Throughout the castle, there were informational panels on this which has been described as "the worst naval defeat England has ever sustained". Mind you ... the Dutch ended up withdrawing but not before towing away 2 large ships of the English Royal Navy and burning a bunch of other ships that were anchored.

You enter through the gatehouse on the land-side, through a courtyard, and then into the main building. There is a pointed bastion on the water-side between two towers. Curtain walls go from both towers back to the gatehouse to enclose the entire castle. Here you can see the South Tower on the right-side of the photo, then the curtain wall that goes around and attaches to the 3-story Gatehouse. The Gatehouse has a clock in the middle, which we will see the inner mechanism at the end.

Through the Gatehouse and into the courtyard gives a nice view of the main building, called "the magazine". Then through to the bastion with the canons. From this side, it definitely looks more imposing than from the other side. One of the canons was actually found in a creek in 1876 and was part of the armament on one of the warships that were sunk in 1667 during the Dutch Raid.

I mentioned the clock on the Gatehouse earlier ... the inner workings can be seen in the top floor of the Gatehouse. It is a late 18th-century clock that was inserted into the existing structure.

While the castle was built in the 1500's, the barracks were built in 1718 to house the castle garrison. Their job was to guard the powder and ammunition stored in the castle. Prior to building the barracks building, the men and their families would live in the castle itself. The rooms supposedly have remained unaltered, which I can believe looking at them. An interesting piece of information ... the people here were not defending the castle, their only duty was to guard the ammunition. The men assigned here were pulled from the Royal Artillery but those people who were too old or not healthy enough to do "real" service. They had this in a report from 1748: "The garrison at Upnor Castle consists of men so decaying and decrepit that they are scarcely able move body and soul together to those taverns nearby which they frequent to the great discomfort of the local inhabitants". That isn't a rave review!