Pieces of King Henry VIII’s long-lost castle were recently found in a somewhat unexpected location: another English castle.
The discovery by researcher Christopher Moore was recently announced by the University of Kent.
Moore, who specializes in hidden and lost heritage, found evidence that stone used at Dover Castle was taken from Henry VIII’s Sandown Castle, a Tudor coastal fortress built roughly 8 miles northeast of Dover that has since been lost to time.
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Built between 1539 and 1540 to defend the coast of England, Sandown was eventually abandoned and dismantled — and Moore found evidence that some of its stone was reused in a Victorian extension at Constable’s Gate at Dover Castle.
Moore traced the stone through historical records and architectural evidence, including an 1883 report documenting materials being sent from Sandown Castle to Dover.
But Dover isn’t the only place where pieces of Sandown found a second life.
Moore has identified at least five sites where stone from the lost fortress was reused — and he singled out Eastry Union Chapel in Kent as perhaps the most interesting.
“It was built for a smaller budget than most of the other examples that I have found that were robbed from Sandown Castle,” he told Fox News Digital.
“Due to this, it contained the greatest variety of stonework, which is mainly ‘freestones,’ [or] stone that can be easily cut.”
Exclusive photographs shared with Fox News Digital show Eastry Union Chapel and its Sandown-linked patchwork of stonework.
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Moore added that most of the freestones probably came from ruined monasteries, some dating back to Norman England, hundreds of years before the Tudor period.
“Even though Sandown is no longer standing, neither are many of the Norman monasteries that were spoiled to build these Tudor castles,” he said.
“That’s why Eastry Chapel is so exciting. It likely contains stonework that today has a near 1,000-year history.”
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Moore also took chemical samples from stone at Eastry and compared them with examples elsewhere in an effort to determine their origins.
The time-consuming process created “a great web of where the masons were likely robbing the stone and where it was going,” he noted.
“Essentially, ancient buildings tell such great stories if only we learned to speak their language!” the researcher said.
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Moore believes many more examples of Sandown’s reused masonry remain to be identified.
“I know of at least five sites where stones were taken from Sandown for use elsewhere and [are] still standing today. However, there will be vastly more,” Moore said.
“Sandown did not just fall in the sea.”
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Moore has also contributed a chapter on Sandown Castle’s forgotten history to the recently published book, “Revivalism in Architecture: Referencing and Reworking the Past.”
The researcher added that Tudor fortifications were built to be remarkably durable, pointing to Sandown’s sister fortress, Deal Castle — which sustained relatively little damage to its original Tudor structure when it was struck by a bomb during World War II.
“For it to fall in the sea is a myth,” added Moore. “[Sandown] was systematically robbed through the centuries for a number of uses.”
