Qualla: Queenborough Castle

Queenborough Castle: Introduction

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. Imagine a perfect stone wheel a hundred and seventy feet across, set on a low hill above the marshes of the Swale. Six round towers ring its outer wall at regular intervals. Inside, a circular curtain encloses a paved courtyard with a single deep well at its centre. There are no parallels in England before it - and almost no traces of it left today. Queenborough Castle was Edward III's experimental masterpiece, a concentric fortress that mounted some of the first cannon ever installed in an English royal castle. Built between 1361 and 1367, it stood for less than three centuries. Parliament's commissioners declared it unfit in 1650 and the stone was carted away to build farmhouses and dockyards. The plan survives in an Elizabethan manuscript at Hatfield House. Almost nothing else does.

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Image: Unknown author | Public domain

Queenborough Castle: A King's Plague Refuge

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Wenceslaus Hollar, Public domain. Edward III bought the land in 1361. The hamlet that stood there - Bynne, two houses worth - was demolished and its inhabitants rehoused. England was in the brief peaceful interval that followed the Treaty of Brétigny, ending the first phase of the Hundred Years' War. The plague h...

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Image: Wenceslaus Hollar | Public domain

Queenborough Castle: The Circle of Yevele

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. Construction credits are uncertain. Some sources name the master mason John Box; others credit Henry Yevele, who would later design the nave of Westminster Abbey; others William of Wykeham, the future Bishop of Winchester. About 1,600 craftsmen and labourers worked on the site, a...

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Image: Unknown author | Public domain

Queenborough Castle: Constables of Royal Blood

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. The constableship of Queenborough was a prize office. John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster - third surviving son of Edward III, sire of the House of Lancaster, and the most powerful nobleman in late-14th-century England - was appointed in 1377. Robert de Vere, Duke of Ireland, Richar...

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Image: Unknown author | Public domain

Queenborough Castle: Demolition by Committee

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ethan Doyle White, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Civil War made castles politically suspect. In 1650 Parliament's commissioners surveyed Queenborough Castle, declared it unfit for use, and recommended demolition. The work was done quickly. Foundations went into the ground; ashlar facing stone went into the new houses of Ken...

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Image: Ethan Doyle White | CC BY-SA 4.0

Queenborough Castle: Time Team's Trench

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Scott Wylie from UK, CC BY 2.0. In September 2005 the Channel 4 archaeology series Time Team came to Queenborough for an episode broadcast in March 2006 under the title "Castle in the Round." Wessex Archaeology ran the dig. The geophysical survey was hampered by a 1970s concrete slab over the well, by imported ...

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Image: Scott Wylie from UK | CC BY 2.0