Excavating the Hull blockhouses

The year 1539 brought a potentially serious threat to the government of King Henry VIII. Finding itself facing a possible reprochment between the Emperor Charles V and King Francis I, and largely without any significant allies the possibility of an armed intervention to undo the breach with Rome led in the following years to a significant programme of military building.

The best known part of this rapid operation are the distinctive line of castles designed as artillery forts that stretch from Cornwall to Kent, from St Mawes to Deal. There were also plans to add to the defences of Calais.

In the north the military reinforcement was less prominent but not insignificant.  The traditional friendship of Scotland with France had been reinforced by King James V’s two successive marriages to French brides. Castles such as Pontefract and Scarborough were surveyed in 1541. At Carlisle a new fortification was added to the city walls. The Citadel that was added there survived at their southern point until the earlier nineteenth century and the court building that replace it echo its design of two round towers. 

The other great project in the north was the building at Kingston upon Hull in 1542-3 of a new castle with outlying forts linked by a curtain wall. It was often referred to as the Hull blockhouses, before being subsumed into a seventeenth century replacement known as the Citadel. This substantial structure protected the eastern side of the city along the line of the river Hull and comprised three towers linked by two fortified walls. It can be clearly seen on the 1611 plan of the city by John Speed and in greater detail in this one by Wenceslaus Hollar from 1638:

The blockhouses are at the top of the plan and can be seen in the right in the prospect of the city above it.

Image: Wikipedia

As things turned out the Emperor and the French King never posed a realistic threat and resumed their hostilities, King Henry made his unfortunate marriage to Anne of Cleves in the hope of a German princely alliance, and King James V died following the defeat of his army by the English at Solway Moss late in 1542.

The Hull blockhouses became notorious as a damp prison for recusants such as the heAd of the Towneley family in the Elizabethan period and eventually disappeared as the city expanded.

The history of the defences of the city is set out on Wikipedia in Fortifications of Kingston upon Hull

However at the moment archaeological excavations are revealing the foundations of the structure of the southern blockhouse, and there are plans to develop the site as a heritage feature. This is described and illustrated by Hull Live from the Hull Daily Mail at Take a look at the dig revealing King Henry VIII's hidden castle in Hull

There is more from the same paper about the closure of the excavation, the need to re-bury the site to protect it, the finds made, and anticipated presentation of the site after an evaluation of what can be displayed at King Henry VIII's hidden Hull fortress to disappear from view