Star Castle Hotel

Listed building

What is recorded here

Star Castle was built at the centre of St Mary's defences after the Spanish Armada, turning the highest ground above Hugh Town into an eight-pointed stronghold. Its unusual plan, surviving rooms and later life as a hotel preserve the core of the wider Garrison rather than an isolated piece of wall.

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Who built and held it

Elizabeth I ordered stronger protection for the Isles of Scilly during the renewed Spanish invasion scare of 1593. Robert Adams, surveyor and mapmaker to the royal works, designed the fort under Francis Godolphin, captain of the islands. Its two main floors over a storage basement gave the garrison both a defensible centre and heated living space.

Attack, change and use

The castle stood inside a growing ring of walls and batteries around the western side of St Mary's. Master Gunner Abraham Tovey recorded its room plan and strengthened the wider Garrison with coastal batteries in the eighteenth century, when troops of the Corps of Invalids served here. Alterations added a stair and changed the accommodation; the central building eventually became a hotel.

What survives

The rendered granite building keeps its remarkable eight-pointed star plan, echoing the bastions around it. Each face has a central projecting point, and the original moulded granite doorway, basement stores, two heated ground-floor rooms and late seventeenth-century wooden stair remain within. The outer walls and regularly placed batteries still explain how the castle commanded the approaches around Hugh Town.

Why it mattered

Star Castle gave the scattered island defences a strong centre after England's war with Spain exposed Scilly's strategic position on Atlantic sea routes. Its form is so closely tied to the islands that an eight-pointed star appears on the council flag. Survival through peaceful hotel use keeps the rare Elizabethan plan legible alongside the wider fort system it once supported.