Little Dennis Blockhouse (The Gatehouse Record)

In the civil parish of Falmouth.
In the historic county of Cornwall.
Modern Authority of Cornwall.
1974 county of Cornwall.
Medieval County of Cornwall.

OS Map Grid Reference: SW82743154
Latitude 50.14407° Longitude -5.04210°

Little Dennis Blockhouse has been described as a certain Artillery Fort.

There are major building remains.

This site is a scheduled monument protected by law.
This is a Grade 1 listed building protected by law*.

Description

Blockhouse, built 1544-46 as part of coastal defences that include Pendennis Castle. Now roofless. Killas rubble with granite dressings, built into bedrock on the landward side; curved merlons to battlements on seaward side; roofless, originally lead; rubble stack beside staircase. D-shaped plan with very thick walls; slightly-projecting stair turret to one corner, doorway recessed to other corner. 4-centred arched doorway; the main gun port with flanking openings facing across the estuary and another gun port facing out to sea. INTERIOR: chamfered flat-headed fireplace; to the opposite wall a large 4-centred arch to splayed and ribbed gun station, with a blocked smoke vent above; a smaller gun station at right angles to this; the drum of newel stair left of the fireplace; large beam sockets and a coped parapet walk. (Listed Building Report)

Sources of information, references and further reading

National Heritage List for England Scheduled Monument Number 1012134, Legacy Scheduled Monument Number 10552
National Heritage List for England Listed Building number(s) 1270099
Historic England (PastScape) Defra or Monument number(s) 428645.
County Historic Environment Record (or Sites and Monuments Record) number(s) 18709.23.

Websites (Gatehouse is not responsible for the content of external websites.)
- Historic Cornwall
Books
- (see Pendennis bibliography - usually considered as part of this fort complex)
  Salter, Mike, 1999, The Castles of Devon and Cornwall (Malvern: Folly Publications) p. 27
  Saunders, Andrew, 1997, Channel Defences (London; Batsford/English Heritage) p. 49, 55
  Pettifer, A., 1995, English Castles, A guide by counties (Woodbridge: Boydell Press) p. 19
  Spreadbury, I. D., 1984, Castles in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly (Redruth)
  King, D.J.C., 1983, Castellarium Anglicanum (London: Kraus) Vol. 1 p. 74
  Fry, P.S., 1980, Castles of the British Isles (David and Charles)
  Price, M. and H., 1980, Castles of Cornwall (Bossiney Books) p. 34
  Lysons, D. and S., 1814, Magna Britannia Vol. 3 Cornwall online transcription
  Polwhele, R., 1803, History of Cornwall
  Norden, J., 1728, Speculi Britanniae Pars
  Lilly, C., 1715, An Exact Plan of Pendennis Fort
Periodical Articles
- Jenkins, Stanley, 1997, 'Pendennis Castle, Cornwall' Fort Vol. 25 p. 207
  Harris, D. and Andrew, J., 1985, 'An Ancient Wall at Pendennis Point, Falmouth' Cornish Archaeology Hendhyscans Kernow Vol. 24 p. 183-4 online copy
Other sources: Theses; 'grey' literature; in-house reports; unpublished works; etc.
- Graeme Kirkham, May 2005, Cornwall & Scilly Urban Survey: Falmouth (Cornwall County Council) Download copy

Most of the sites or buildings recorded in this web site are NOT open to the public and permission to visit a site must always be sought from the landowner or tenant.
It is an offence to disturb a Scheduled Monument without consent. It is a destruction of everyone's heritage to remove archaeological evidence from ANY site without proper recording and reporting.
Don't use metal detectors on historic sites without authorisation.

The information on this web page may be derived from information compiled by and/or copyright of Historic England, County Historic Environment Records and other individuals and organisations. It may also contain information licensed under the Open Government Licence. All the sources given should be consulted to identify the original copyright holder and permission obtained from them before use of the information on this site for commercial purposes.
The author and compiler of Gatehouse does not receive any income from the site and funds it himself. The information within this site is provided freely for educational purposes only.

The bibliography owes much to various bibliographies produced by John Kenyon for the Council for British Archaeology, the Castle Studies Group and others.

Suggestions for finding online and/or hard copies of bibliographical sources can be seen at this link.
Minor archaeological investigations, such as watching brief reports, and some other 'grey' literature is most likely to be held by H.E.R.s but is often poorly referenced and is unlikely to be recorded here, or elsewhere, but some suggestions can be found here.

The possible site or monument is represented on maps as a point location. This is a guide only. It should be noted that OS grid references defines an area, not a point location. In practice this means the actual center of the site or monument may often, but not always, be to the North East of the point shown. Locations derived from OS grid references and from latitude longitiude may differ by a small distance.
Further information on mapping and location can be seen at this link.

Please help to make this as useful a resource as possible by contacting Gatehouse if you see errors, can add information or have suggestions for improvements in functality and design.
Help is acknowledged.

*The listed building may not be the actual medieval building, but a building on the site of, or incorporating fragments of, the described site.

Data >	PastScape	County HER	Scheduling	Listing	I. O. E.
Maps >	Streetmap	NLS maps	Where's the path	Old-Maps
Data/Maps >	Magic	V. O. B.	Geology	LiDAR	Open Domesday
Air Photos >	Bing Maps	Google Maps	Getmapping	ZoomEarth
Photos >	CastleFacts	Geograph	Flickr	Panoramio