Today has been a great day. It started off with Pevensey Castle, which began life as a Roman fortification in the AD 280s. It was the southernmost in their "Saxon Shore" defense against north European pirates. When the Romans withdrew, the locals started using the wall for building material, but large parts of it still stands, and was used by the Normans as part of their structure later on. It was even used to house yanks and canucks during WW2. Again, the free audio guide from English Heritage is a must.
Later in the day I went on to Lewes (pronounced Lewis) and saw their castle, and also stumbled upon the hotel where Tom Paine in 1768 started his debate society. More about that in the next installment. Finally I watched my favorite football team Liverpool demolish local rivals Everton 2-0. A blissful day, indeed.
All Pevensey pics here.
The Roman wall is still up to 3.5 meters thick in places and runs around much of the castle ruins.
A thousand years ago, the sea, or rather marshlands, came all the way up to the castle. Later, farmers drained and worked the marshland.
Pevensey and surrounding lands were given by William the Bastard to his half brother Bob (it sounds so much better than "Robert de Mortain"), who built the first (probably wooden) castle here and later a stone keep. No one knows today what the keep might have looked like over the years, probably it was quite tall. The structure of the keep was reputedly unlike that of all other Norman castles.
Pevensey even had a proper moat, woo hoo!
Much of today's open courtyard must have consisted of buildings. This one, of stone, was the chapel. Other, wooden buildings we can only speculate about.
Makes kabooom. Or rather, big crash. These stones were for the trebuchet, a type of catapult with "frightening accuracy".
Dis be da real kabooom.
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