Upnor Castle

Situated just inside the estuary of the River Medway, Upnor is a truly bizarre piece of English history; for many reasons.

For personal reasons, Upnor Castle seems to be the favourite castle in the Medway area, which I don’t understand because Rochester is by far bigger, is linked with the Magna Carta, and is, in my opinion, a much more beautiful castle than Upnor.

On a less personal note, Upnor castle is kind of weird to get to, especially if you’re going by bus.

If you’re travelling from the Chatham Dockyard or Gillingham to Upnor, I would recommend getting a cab. The bus ride there is a bit long, even from Chatham, and then you have to walk across and overpass of a highway, and through a field, and it really is a bit of an ordeal, so don’t be surprised when you see a very circuitous route when you plot your trip into google maps. Don’t be daunted, it’s totally doable! It just looks very, very strange.

Upnor is also, strategically, positioned at a very strange point in the river.

As you can see, it’s situated just behind St. Mary’s island, just up from the Chatham Dockyards. At any given time a sizable portion of England’s fleet would be situated in that bend of the river Medway, being constructed or repaired. To that end, I have to wonder why Upnor wasn’t built on St. Mary’s itself. Higher up in the river, with chains blockading either flow around the island. The castle was only built for one purpose; to ensure that nobody could sail up the Medway to devastate the English fleet while it was immobilised.

Naturally, that’s exactly what the Dutch did in 1667. In fact, they managed to get most of the way to Upnor without being attacked, capture a flagship, and burn several ships before they sailed home to the Netherlands, having dealt what is arguably still the greatest naval defeat suffered by the English to this day.

For an extra pound on your entrance fee you can hire an audio tour guide and have a wander around this strange castle. You can spend a good half day there, but not much more. There are also various pubs that are original to the castle, that is they are still the same buildings under the same names that the soldiers of Upnor would have known them as. I have not eaten there myself but I am told both that it is well worth it, and that a reservation for lunch is required.The pubs are quite popular!

Like Hampton Court it is a hodgepodge of construction and repairs throughout it’s history. It tells the story of how the English stored their gunpowder in such a way that it wouldn’t spark, how the soldiers who lived at the fort spent their time, and more importantly, the story of the one day of action Upnor Castle saw, and how the Dutch Raid shifted the course of history forever.

I’ll give you a hint; without the Raid on the Medway the sentence “The sun never sets on the British Empire” might never have existed.

Are there any bizarre but significant places you’ve been to? Let me know in the comments!