Old Walmer Court (The Gatehouse Record)

Also known as, or recorded in historical documents as;
Walmer Old Castle; Walmer Hall

In the civil parish of Walmer.
In the historic county of Kent.
Modern Authority of Kent.
1974 county of Kent.
Medieval County of Kent.

OS Map Grid Reference: TR36715036
Latitude 51.20337° Longitude 1.38719°

Old Walmer Court has been described as a probable Fortified Manor House.

There are masonry ruins/remnants remains.

This site is a scheduled monument protected by law.

Description

The ruined remains of a moated, semi-fortified manor house adjacent to the parish church. Pottery discovered during excavation work dates from 1150-75. The upper floor of the former first floor hall house is now fragmentary, but the two undercrofts below survive. The building is roughly square in plan with corner turrets, three of which survive. An external stair led up the west side of the house into a forebuilding at first floor level. The inner hall or chamber is narrower than the outer hall and may have been divided into two rooms, as was the corresponding undercroft below. A moat originally enclosed both the manor house and the nearby church. (PastScape)

The remains comprise a roofless rectangular structure, 16.5 m by 15 m standing two storeys to a maximum height of 8 m. The walling of flint rubble is 1.2 - 1.4 m thick. The building is sub-divided into three unequal compartments; the entrance being at the NW corner. There are no surviving architectural features, but the walling is identical to that of the nearby St Mary's church, which has been dated to c1120 with EE additions (PastScape–Field Investigators Comments–F1 ASP 21-JUL-64)

Comments

This is a thin walled 'proto-keep' with turret on each corner. There is evidence that a banding of finer stone (presumable Caen) has been robbed from the structure. When the original flint work was harled and limewashed this band of golden stone would have been striking. A fine and important building rather overlooked because of the nearby Walmer Castle artillery fort of Henry VIII, home of the Wardens of the Cinque Ports. Sometimes dated as C13 but does seem to be early C12.

Sources of information, references and further reading

National Heritage List for England Scheduled Monument Number 1005142, Legacy Scheduled Monument Number ke163
Historic England (PastScape) Defra or Monument number(s) 468402.
County Historic Environment Record (or Sites and Monuments Record) number(s) TR 35 SE 12.

Websites (Gatehouse is not responsible for the content of external websites.)
- CastleUK.net
Books
- Philp, Brian, 2011, The Norman Fortified Manor-house at Walmer (Kent Archaeological Rescue Unit: Kent Minor Site Series 21)
  Newman, John, 1983, Buildings of England: North east and east Kent (Harmondsworth) p. 489
  Guy, John, 1980, Kent Castles (Meresborough Books) p. 243
  Renn, D.F., 1973 (2 edn.), Norman Castles of Britain (London: John Baker) p. 338
  Gould, I. Chalkley, 1908, in Page, Wm (ed), VCH Kent Vol. 1 p. 435 online copy
  Elvin, C.R., 1890, Records of Walmer
  Elvin, C.R., 1864, History of Walmer and Walmer Castle p. 15-16, 41
  Hasted, Edward, 1800 (2edn), The history and topographical survey of the county of Kent Vol. 10 p. 23-29 online transcription
Periodical Articles
- Tatton-Brown, T., 1977, 'Investigations and Excavations during the Year' Archaeologia Cantiana Vol. 93 p. 222 online copy
  Webster and Cherry, 1975, Medieval Archaeology Vol. 19 p. 251 online copy
  Weston, R., 'Schools visit fortified manor house at Walmer' Kent Archaeological Review Vol. 39 p. 271 online copy
  Mynott, E., 1974, Kent Archaeological review Vol. 38 p. 226 online copy
  Rigold, S.E., 1966, Archaeological Journal Vol. 126 p. 215-7

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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.
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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.

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