Plymouth Castle and Barbican Rediscovered

Tuesday 29th April 2025

Peter Holt, The SHIPS Project CIC

Peter is a marine technologist and archaeologist who has recently written a book on the early military defences of Plymouth.

Peter will be talking about Plymouth's castle, known as the Castle Quadrate, which was built on Lambhay Hill around 1377 and the Barbican and chain boom below that the castle was built to protect. Very little is known about these early defences because the town records were destroyed by arson in 1549 during an uprising. But there are clues about the precise location of the castle, how and why it was built and what it looked like in a few old documents, court and church records and in the landscape itself. In the process, a much older fort was discovered in the Barbican area, one destroyed in an attack by the French during the Hundred Years' War.

Club 27 will open at 6pm, the talk starts at 7pm and will last approximately 45 min. We usually have last orders around 9/9:30pm