Portchester Castle

The Roman fort, probably built between AD 285 and 290, was laid out symmetrically. Around its perimeter were 20 regularly spaced D-shaped towers, of which 16 remain. The Roman walls stand to a height of 6.1 metres, though the upper parts are medieval.

 
 

The Roman wall on the east side of Portchester Castle. The projecting D-shaped towers were characteristic of the Roman forts built along the Channel coast in the late 3rd century

 
 
The original building technique, using flint and courses of flat limestone slabs, or double courses of brick, is still clear, especially along the south wall. Set midway along each wall was a gate, the two main ones to the east and west (the Watergate and Landgate respectively, both substantially rebuilt in the 14th century). The two secondary postern gates were to the north and south.
[ http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/portchester-castle/history/]

 

 

 

The square great tower stands more than 30 metres high, and in the 12th century contained some of the most important apartments in the castle. It was built in three stages. As it was first completed in the 1130s, it rose to a point roughly level with the tops of the exterior buttresses. This structure was almost doubled in height probably within 20 years. Finally, the crown of the building was raised in the 1320s.
The great tower was later altered extensively, especially during the Napoleonic Wars (1799–1815), when extra floors were inserted to lodge thousands of prisoners. The spiral stair in the south-west angle provided the only original access between floors. Faintly visible on the second-floor walls are the remains of an elaborate painted decorative scheme for an early 19th-century theatre

 

 

 

The remains of the royal apartments in the inner bailey, built by Richard II in the 1390s, with the great hall range to the left and the great chamber range to the right

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Looking east across the inner and outer baileys of Portchester Castle.