Name: Dover Castle — The Key to England
Uploaded: 2025-08-02T17:52:20.000Z
Duration: 9 min 20 s
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Basic passive voice

Dover Castle was christened the key to England.

Today we're going to be finding out how it earned that title.

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I'm Paul and I'm a historian at English Heritage and we're going to be exploring some areas newly opened to the public.

You may have heard of King John and Magna Carta and the barons that rebelled against him.

But did you know it was all part of a great civil war that raged across England between 1215 and 1217?

The rebels invited a French prince, Louis the Lion, and an army to England to help them.

Dover Castle played a key role in that conflict, successfully resisting two great sieges when Louis and his army tried to smash their way in.

But siege was a risky business and good preparations were the key to success for both sides.

For the attackers, siege meant getting into this, a terrifying prospect.

They needed to make thorough preparations, lots of weapons and ammunition, lots of food, and specialist engineers with catapults to smash their way in or miners to dig their way underneath.

Whatever way they tried, it must have been a terrifying prospect.

The basic idea of an attacking force during a siege was to get into the castle, so they might go over it, through it or under it.

To do that, they might have a large force of men equipped with ladders who would try to storm the wall and climb over it, or they would use their siege catapults to batter the wall and make a hole.

Finally, they could use miners to dig underneath it, undermine the wall and make it come crashing down, leaving a gap large enough for a determined force of soldiers to force their way in.

For the defenders of the castle, preparations meant a huge supply of food and ammunition.

They would have to make it last a long time because sieges sometimes last months.

They also needed a massive supply of weapons and ammunition, so lots of arrows, darts and stalls, and they needed their own siege catapults to smash those of the enemy.

It was a case of who could last the longest.

Siege catapults and how they worked are really interesting, and we have some here at Dover, so let's go and have a look at some.

Here we are at Dover Castle's new themed play area.

You've probably heard a little bit about catapults.

Catapults were the engines that used to fire things at people, the artillery, before the invention of gunpowder weapons or cannon.

You wouldn't want to be anywhere near them.

The main aim was to actually fire stones over the castle wall to smash buildings and to kill people, but also sometimes what they would do would target the base of the castle wall, repeatedly hitting the same spot so that eventually the wall would collapse and the enemy soldiers could storm into the castle.

Behind me is a replica of a small siege engine called a Perrier.

It's one long arm that pivoted about a point, three ropes at one end on this version.

The people pulled down on it, rotated the arm, at the other end of which was the sling containing a large stone.

We've left the sling off this one, because believe me, you wouldn't want to be on the receiving end of this little beauty.

The Perrier had a big brother called a trebuchet.

It substituted people power with a huge counterweight that did the work of firing.

So just imagine being a soldier here all those years ago, looking out at those trebuchets firing at you and thinking, am I going to survive this?

Well, the castle did survive, but it was severely damaged.

In fact, the north gate just behind me was partially brought down.

So if your castle was badly damaged during a siege, you'd want to do something about it.

So for about 15 years afterwards, a huge amount of money was spent and a massive effort was made to make the castle secure.

That included blocking the old north gate and making new entrances further south in a more secure position in the castle.

Those repairs really helped, but it still left an area outside the old north gate of the castle vulnerable to attack.

So the defenders repaired the Barbican there, but it was reached not by a bridge as it had been, but by a tunnel.

Yes, I said a tunnel dug from inside the castle underneath the castle wall, across the castle ditch and onto the Barbican, where it divided into three right here.

I'm standing in it now, and you can too, walking in the footsteps of generations of soldiers here at Dover Castle.

Dover Castle remained an important place into the 20th century, but it had to be adapted for new weapons and new technology.

By the end of the 18th century, Dover Castle could no longer withstand a modern force equipped with powerful artillery to smash the old walls.

And so began a period of change, when the old castle was transformed into a modern fortress, defended by a strong force of men, equipped with bomb-proof barracks and ramparts, a huge store of gunpowder and hundreds of cannon.

The medieval tunnel to the Barbican, renamed the Spur, was transformed by incorporating all sorts of tricks and traps, including remotely closing doors and falling doors, so that the enemy could be trapped if they managed to break in.

Here, the medieval bridge that crossed the castle ditch to the Barbican was converted into a copper bridge.

A small but powerful cannon could fire hundreds of small shots to saturate the ditch with fire, in case the enemy managed to break in.

The defences here were cleverly designed and would have been really unexpected.

So let's now go outside and see what the enemy would have faced.

We're finally here, outside at the northern tip of Dover Castle.

Formidable even today, with layer upon layer of defences stacked behind me.

So just imagine you're a soldier in the front rank of a force about to attack the castle.

You're probably really worried because you don't know what to expect.

You'd also be under fire in the medieval period, with arrows and crossbow darts, in the 18th and 19th century, under cannon fire and musket shot.

And then, just when you're not expecting it, a group of well-armed soldiers suddenly emerge from a tunnel that you didn't know was there.

Assaulting any castle was pretty difficult, but this one was almost impossible.

And that's why Dover Castle was known as the key to England.