Federation of Old Cornwall Societies

Registered Charity 

No. 247283 

  THE GATEHOUSE 

The comprehensive gazetteer of the medieval fortifications and castles of Cornwall

With thanks to Philip Davis

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List of Fortifications and Castles

This site was originally part of a much larger site covering the whole of England, Wales Isle of Man, Channel Islands and Cornwall. The site was created by Philip Davis who has had to give up the work because to his failing health. In April 2007 Phillip announced that he would be closing the site in October and invited people to download its contents. I felt that his research work should not be lost and have placed the Cornwall section on this site in order to preserve it for the future. Our thanks go to Phillip for allowing the Federation of Old Cornwall Societies to publish his work and we wish him well.  

Phillip wrote the following as an introduction to his site, I have only altered it in order to a make it relevant to Cornwall rather the rest of UK.

"This site is designed to be a comprehensive listing of the medieval castles, castle sites, fortified houses, urban and coastal defences and other fortifications of Cornwall built or in use from 1000 to 1600. It's not a history of castles and users of the site are expected to have a basic understanding of castles and medieval Cornwall. The site is a resource for those interested in castles studies both professional and amateur. It is probably of more interest to the archaeologist than the historian. It is unlikely to be of much interest to the genealogist.

This is an ambitious project and any such list is bound to have omissions and errors. However, it is hoped that by using the flexible and responsive media of the Internet that this list can be as comprehensive and as current as possible. I've taken, as my standard for what is a fortification, that which the various authors I draw my information from consider to be a fortification, although some sites have later been rejected as fortification and these are noted as such. Sites which consist of entirely passive defences such as moated houses and walled sites without wall walks and parapets are generally excluded. However, as a 'control group' I do list all the royal and episcopal residential houses and hunting lodges of the period (lumped together under the title 'palace'). Some of these were fortified but many were not. Defining castles is difficult and any definition of a castle should also explain why some places of equal social status were not castles.

The site consists of three main sections. The first is the listings of medieval fortifications; the second is a listing of the texts and online sources used in compiling information for these lists, this section also contains details of some other important or useful texts and Internet resources; the third section is a collection of other resources of interest to castle studies such as distribution maps and a list of licences to crenellate."

Philip Davis