{"id":3922,"date":"2026-05-14T17:14:34","date_gmt":"2026-05-14T16:14:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/?p=3922"},"modified":"2026-06-15T11:56:38","modified_gmt":"2026-06-15T10:56:38","slug":"southsea-castle-ramparts-land-side","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/?p=3922","title":{"rendered":"Southsea castle ramparts (land side)"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Ben Whiteman<\/em><\/p>\n

Beginning groundwork in 1813, the castle expansion would be overseen by Major-General Benjamin Fisherman and last until the finishing touches were made in 1817. Southsea castle spent much of the late 18th and early 19th century in a poor state of disrepair. Coastal erosion had taken parts of the western wall while an accidental gunpowder explosion in 1759 destroyed a large portion of the castle. The explosion is believed to have started from a large cooking fire in the east wing living quarters. It\u2019s thought that sparks fell through the cracks in the old floorboards igniting the gunpowder storeroom below. However, this was never confirmed.[1] Tragically the explosion killed 17 people as well as taking the entirety of the eastern wing, with the western wing being blown open but luckily its contents did not ignite as well. The castle was in such a poor state that a report made by the Duke of Richmond in 1785 argued that no money should be spent on the castle to repair it, instead suggesting a new more modern fort should be constructed nearby.[2] The image here shows the 1577 plan from the castle original design, the very same the Duke of Richmond would have seen:<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>

Figure 1: The castle from a 1577 plan; A – east gun platform; B – south bastion; C – keep; D – north bastion and bridge; E – west gun platform. Image by Hchc2009 (no alterations)
https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/File:Southsea_Castle_Plan_1577.jpg<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

The call for a national focus on defence was of great concern amid the raging Napoleonic wars. Britain saw a French invasion as a catastrophic threat with Britain under constant fear of invasion especially in 1803-1805. Southsea Castle was mobilised into action by these fears with 13 canons available. Both sides saw this as near inevitable: all Napoleon had to do was gain control of the English Channel long enough for his armies to cross. Napoleon was extremely overconfident, believing the English navy could be easily distracted and diverted from the Channel by a decoy attack.[3] Before his attacks Napoleon even wrote:<\/p>\n

\n

A nation is very foolish, when it has no fortifications and no army, to lay itself open to seeing an army of 100,000 veteran troops land on its shores \u2026 It is necessary for us to be masters of the sea for six hours only, and England will have ceased to exist – Napoleon Bonaparte, 9th June 1805<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

Napoleon’s arrogance blinded him. His ideas of \u201c100,000 veteran troops\u201d crossing the channel even in one day was completely impractical with the ships of the day.[4] Despite his aspirations, Napoleon would mostly fail in his endeavour as with attempted landing operations like the Battle of Trafalgar ending in an English victory. It’s often assumed that the French fleet was crushed completely but in reality they remained a consistent threat for the rest of the war.[5] Coastal forts, like Southsea Castle, would be integral to national defence of this threat and there was a significant lack of them along the eastern and southern coast. A weakness Napoleon was eager to exploit. However, had Southsea Castle faced an invasion force its old equipment, lack of manpower and poor condition of the fort would have made it an ineffective naval defence. If a ground invasion made it to England the French would have decimated the smaller British army. This is what motivated the commission of coastal forts and repairs like the reconstruction of Southsea castle, as it kept the fight at the sea.[6]<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>

Despite English mockery, the threat of invasion by Napoleon was very real; image: Library of Congress, LC-DIG-ppmsca-04314<\/p><\/div>\n

Southsea Castle was an important fort in the defence against Napoleon, but it was only big enough to hold a few dozen soldiers which weakened its defensive effectiveness.[7] That is why the decision was made to expand the fort while repairing it. The original size of the fort can be seen in the courtyard with a different layer of bricks showing where the original walls were, extending the walls inland by 20-30 feet. A larger force of 200 men was now stationed to defend the channel to the Portsmouth harbour. Portsmouth\u2019s importance in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars was significant with \u2153 of the repairs to naval ships taking place at the dockyard.[8] It saw 1810 ships pass through with a surge of jobs as a result, approximately 92% increase. The dock itself was extended to accommodate for the sheer volume of ships needing attention with a dry dock and more workshops constructed. The reason Portsmouth saw so many ships for repairs was due to the aging condition of the ship, often requiring extensive work to keep ships seaworthy. Another reason was the rapid expansion to the navy with the fleet going from 390 ships in 1793 to 979 by 1809.With Portsmouth\u2019s prominence in the war and its established lackluster condition, the attention the castle received was long overdue.<\/p>\n

In terms of the repair work to the castle under General Fisherman, most of the castle saw some form of attention. The entrance to the castle was also completely reconstructed but used the original entrance foundations. The keep underwent significant changes with the interior being completely rebuilt to its current stone walls, while the roof of the keep was turned into a gun platform which provided even more artillery to destroy a French fleet. The dry moat was reformed to make a larger defensive obstacle and a bomb-proof tunnel was constructed to link the fort to the large wall on the coastal side. This outer wall was also constructed as a part of the works creating a counterscarp that forced attackers into the dry moat in order to scale the walls. The wall has slits facing into the dry moat to shoot those in the moat from behind. The majority of the construction was finished within a year but it would take until 1816 for the final adjustments to be finished.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>

Figure 2: The original redesign plans made by General Benjamin Fisherman of the Royal Engineers (1813-1816).<\/p><\/div>\n

There is a tablet above the inside of the castle entrance that marks Major General Fisher and his Royal Engineers who worked on the castle to build what you now see today.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

References<\/strong><\/p>\n

[1] Stephen Brooks, Southsea Castle <\/em>(Pitkin Unichrome Ltd, 1996), 12.<\/p>\n

[2] \u201cSouthsea Castle,\u201d Castellogy, accessed 30th April 2026, https:\/\/castellogy.com\/sites\/sites-south-west\/southsea-castle<\/a><\/p>\n

[3] Frank Mclynn, Napoleon<\/em>: A Biography,<\/em> (Pimlico, 1998), 330.<\/p>\n

[4] Alfred T. Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power upon the French Revolution and Empire, 1793-1812. Vol. II <\/em>(Pickle Partners Publishing, 2013), 65.<\/p>\n

[5] Mark Philp, Resisting Napoleon : The British Response to the Threat of Invasion, 1797-1815<\/em>, (Taylor & Francis Group, 2016) 1.<\/p>\n

[6] Philp, Resisting Napoleon,<\/em> 2.<\/p>\n

[7] Arthur Corney, Southsea Castle<\/em>, (Portsmouth City Museums, 1967) 18.<\/p>\n

[8] Paul Brown, The Portsmouth Dockyard Story: From 1212 to the present day<\/em>, (The History Press, 2018), 56.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Ben Whiteman Beginning groundwork in 1813, the castle expansion would be overseen by Major-General Benjamin Fisherman and last until the finishing touches were made in 1817. Southsea castle spent much of the late 18th and early 19th century in a poor state of disrepair. Coastal erosion had taken parts of the western wall while an accidental gunpowder explosion in 1759 destroyed a large portion of the castle. The explosion is believed to have started from a large cooking fire in the east wing living quarters. It\u2019s thought that sparks fell through the cracks in the old floorboards igniting the gunpowder storeroom below. However, this was never confirmed.[1] Tragically the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5,18,4,1],"tags":[883,927,778,17,164,89],"class_list":["post-3922","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-learning_in_focus","category-public-history","category-research-in-focus","category-uncategorized","tag-fortifications","tag-napoleon","tag-napoleonic-wars","tag-nineteenth-century","tag-southsea-castle","tag-warfare"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p91PlX-11g","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3922","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3922"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3922\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3934,"href":"https:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3922\/revisions\/3934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}