One look at the map shows you the strategic position of Elizabeth Castle for defending Jersey and even today it is a challenge to visit.
Visiting Elizabeth Castle
Elizabeth Castle is located on a small island in St Helier Bay and as such you need a ferry to visit. The ferry departs every 30 minutes from the Westpark Slip next to the Jardins de la Mer. To be fair you can walk across the causeway at low tide if you trust your judgement but that has always seemed dodgy to me. On site there is a cafe and a shop and the usual audio tour options.
My Experience
We were working in St Helier and after getting off the ferry we finally gravitated to Elizabeth Castle and took the DUKW across the causeway. The castle was huge and spanned the 16th – 20th centuries. We spent so long there we actually got locked in and the last ferry was getting ready to leave without us. Drama averted and we made it back to dry land and a well earned fruit smoothie, although no cake!
The castle is a Tudor creation, so designed around gun ports rather than high medieval walls and arrow slits. Expanded in the seventeenth century it saw a new lease of life in the German occupation of the 1940’s as they added bunkers and lookout posts.
Elizabeth Castle Photo Gallery
History
With the introduction of gunpowder and cannon, the old medieval castle of Mont Orgueil on Jersey’s east coast was no longer up to the job of defending Jersey. A new castle was needed and the chosen location was a small island know as The Islet, about half a mile out to sea and connected to land at low tide by a causeway. The new Elizabeth Castle would protect St Helier and offer a safe anchorage for merchant vessels.
Elizabeth Castle is divided into four parts. The oldest part is called the Upper Ward, below which is the Lower Ward, which includes the Parade Ground. From here, you can access the Breakwater and Hermitage Rock. Lastly is the Outer Ward, which you enter through the Main Gate.
Fortification of the site began between 1550 and 1551, when a gun platform was built on the highest point of the island. Forty years later, Queen Elizabeth I sent her military engineer, Paul Ivy, to oversee the construction of the Upper Ward. Sir Walter Raleigh, Governor of Jersey from 1600 to 1603, later named the new Castle after Her Majesty; Fort Isabella Bellissima, or Elizabeth Castle.
Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, the Castle was extended and developed. In the 1640s, when Jersey was drawn into the English Civil War, a fortified windmill was constructed beside the Green to better defend the Lower Ward.
The Castle was eventually built over two small islands that were joined together in 1668, when the Curtain Walls were extended to enclose the tidal ditch that separated them. During the first half of the 18th century, the Lower Ward was remodelled with the building of a new Soldiers’ Barracks and Officers’ Quarters.
At first, the tide that surrounded the Castle seven hours out of twelve was seen as its strength, but events later proved it to be a weakness. When the French invaded Jersey on 6 January 1781, the troops garrisoned at the Castle could not take part in the defence of St Helier once they were cut off by the tide.
So, a new fortification was built on the Town Hill overlooking St Helier – Fort Regent. Elizabeth Castle continued to be a military garrison until 1923, when it was sold by the British Government to the States of Jersey. It was fortified once again by the German Forces during the Occupation of 1940 to 1945.
References
The history above is copied from the Jersey Heritage site here and it gives full visiting information on the castle.