Dover Castle from Western Heights
Dover Castle is a great medieval fortress, created by King Henry II and his Plantagenet successors.
At its heart stands the keep or Great Tower, 83 feet (25.3m) high and just under 100 feet (30m) square, with walls up to 21 feet (6.5m) thick. A symbol of kingly power and authority guarding the gateway to the realm, it was also a palace designed for royal ceremony, and to house Henry’s travelling court.
Commanding the shortest sea crossing between England and the continent, Dover Castle has a long and immensely eventful history. Many centuries before King Henry II began the great stone castle here in the 1160s, its spectacular site atop the famous ‘White Cliffs’ was an Iron Age hill fort, and very soon after his victory at Hastings in 1066, William the Conqueror converted this fort into a Norman earthwork and timber-stockaded castle. From then on Dover Castle was garrisoned uninterruptedly until 1958, a continuous nine-century span equalled only by the Tower of London and Windsor Castle. Right up until until 1945, its defences were successively updated in response to every European war involving Britain.
Dover Castle from Western Heights
Dover Castle is a great medieval fortress, created by King Henry II and his Plantagenet successors.
At its heart stands the keep or Great Tower, 83 feet (25.3m) high and just under 100 feet (30m) square, with walls up to 21 feet (6.5m) thick. A symbol of kingly power and authority guarding the gateway to the realm, it was also a palace designed for royal ceremony, and to house Henry’s travelling court.
Commanding the shortest sea crossing between England and the continent, Dover Castle has a long and immensely eventful history. Many centuries before King Henry II began the great stone castle here in the 1160s, its spectacular site atop the famous ‘White Cliffs’ was an Iron Age hill fort, and very soon after his victory at Hastings in 1066, William the Conqueror converted this fort into a Norman earthwork and timber-stockaded castle. From then on Dover Castle was garrisoned uninterruptedly until 1958, a continuous nine-century span equalled only by the Tower of London and Windsor Castle. Right up until until 1945, its defences were successively updated in response to every European war involving Britain.