Harry's Walls

Ruins

Explorer Tom

Harry's Walls is a splendid name for a fort that never quite got round to being a fort. Above the harbour on St Mary's in the Isles of Scilly, two pointed bastions and a connecting wall stand where Tudor planners imagined a whole square stronghold; the view suggests the builders at least chose an excellent place for a tea break. Despite the name, work began in 1551 under Edward VI, four years after Henry VIII died. England wanted stronger guns guarding its southern approaches, and Scilly mattered at the mouth of the English Channel. The proposed fort would have had angled bastions at all four corners, with buildings ranged inside its walls. Only the two south-western bastions and the 27-metre wall between them were finished. The scheme stalled because the position was not as useful for defending the harbour as it first appeared. Later builders favoured the headland now called the Garrison; Star Castle rose there in the 1590s. At Harry's Walls you can still read the sharp shapes intended to cover the wall against attack, even after centuries of stone being taken away. I picture a Tudor clerk arriving with a very long checklist and leaving with two boxes ticked. English Heritage welcomes visitors free during reasonable daylight hours. Walk or cycle up from St Mary's harbour area; the final approach is an uphill footpath, with uneven ground and a sheer drop, so leave the heroic scrambling to imaginary soldiers. Hugh Town has the shops and toilets, not the ruins. Come for the uncompleted Tudor ambition, then turn around and give that harbour a proper inspection yourself.

What is recorded here

Harry's Walls are the unfinished remains of an advanced artillery fort ordered by Edward VI's government in 1551 to defend Hugh Town harbour from France. Planned with Italian-style bastions, it was abandoned as money ran short and the invasion danger passed.

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Who built and held it

Captain John Killigrew of Pendennis Castle was ordered to build the fort on St Mary's after Thomas Seymour inspected the Isles of Scilly. The Crown intended a square garrison fort with four angular bastions, living quarters, a mill and a brewhouse.

Attack, change and use

Two small guns were installed, but the fort never faced attack and was never completed. Later governments chose Star Castle instead; rubbish was dumped among the abandoned walls, and eighteenth-century visitors blamed the site before modern research showed it covered the harbour effectively.

What survives

Two granite bastions, their protective orillons, a connecting curtain wall and part of an unfinished ditch survive on the south-west side. Stone robbing exposed the rubble core, but the remaining plan still shows the intended new style of defence.

Why it mattered

Had it been finished, Harry's Walls would have been the most advanced fort design then in England. Its abandonment records the financial limits of Edward VI's defensive programme and the moment Italian artillery ideas were reaching English shores.