Client:- English Heritage
Project:- St Mary’s & Tresco, Isles of Scilly Reconstruction illustrations of: Halangy Down ancient village, King Charles Castle domestic quarters, King Charles Castle gun crew, Cromwell’s Castle gun crew,
Traversing gun crew, The Woolpack battery & The Powder Magazine.
Cromwell’s Castle stands on a rocky promontory guarding the lovely anchorage between Bryher and Tresco, this round tower was built after the conquest of the Royalist Scillies in 1651 and is one of the few surviving Cromwellian fortifications in Britain.
Probably dating from the 1620s,though with considerable later alterations and reconstructions, the magazine near the entrance to the Garrison has a strong vaulted ceiling and very thick walls. These are only pierced by small openings to provide some ventilation and to admit a little light from lamps or candles kept safely
outside the structure. The magazine was set within a walled enclosure built into the hillside –measures designed to prevent explosions damaging Star Castle and the Garrison Walls. What appears to be a chimney was a structure onto which a vital lightning conductor was attached.
A few metres down the slope from Bant’s Carn is Halangy Down Ancient Village, a hamlet or village from the Iron Age (about 800 BC to AD 100) and Roman period. Here there are the remains of nearly a dozen interconnecting stone houses.
King Charles’s Castle is a ruined artillery fort overlooking New Grimsby harbour on the island of Tresco in the Isles of Scilly. Built between 1548 and 1551 to protect the islands from French attack, it would have held a battery of guns and an accompanying garrison, designed to prevent enemy vessels from entering the harbour. The castle is polygonal in design, constructed from granite stone, with the gun battery at the front, and a dining room, kitchen and living accommodation at the rear. An additional defensive earthwork was constructed around it during the 17th century. The design of the castle is unusual for the period, and is only seen elsewhere in blockhouses along the River Thames.
The only surviving traversing platform in King Charles’ Battery – though there may have been another at the western extreme of the Garrison Walls, probably in Boscawen Battery.
The Woolpack Battery was constructed 1743 to 1744 the stonework was of higher quality, with
large, regular blocks in neat courses. However, the drainage spouts of the last phases had yet to make an
appearance. On the left side of the east wall the interrupted stonework is due to the insertion of a
pillbox during the Second World War.
