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William the Conqueror lands at Pevensey by Peter Jackson

Pevensey Castle is a medieval castle and former Roman Saxon Shore fort at Pevensey in the English county of East Sussex. The site is a scheduled monument in the care of English Heritage and is open to visitors. Built around 290 AD and known to the Romans as Anderitum, the fort appears to have been the base for a fleet called the Classis Anderidaensis. The reasons for its construction are unclear; long thought to have been part of a Roman defensive system to guard the British and Gallic coasts against Saxon pirates, it has more recently been suggested that Anderitum and the other Saxon Shore forts were built by a usurper in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to prevent Rome from reimposing its control over Britain.

Anderitum fell into ruin following the end of the Roman occupation but was reoccupied in 1066 by the Normans, for whom it became a key strategic bulwark. A stone keep and fortification was built within the Roman walls and faced several sieges. Although its garrison was twice starved into surrender, it was never successfully stormed. The castle was occupied more or less continuously until the 16th century, apart from a possible break in the early 13th century when it was slighted during the First Barons' War. It had been abandoned again by the late 16th century and remained a crumbling, partly overgrown ruin until it was acquired by the state in 1925.

Pevensey Castle was reoccupied between 1940 and 1945, during the Second World War, when it was garrisoned by units from the Home Guard, the British and Canadian armies and the United States Army Air Corps. Machine-gun posts were built into the Roman and medieval walls to control the flat land around Pevensey and guard against the threat of a German invasion. They were left in place after the war and can still be seen today. Pevensey is one of many Norman castles built around the south of England.

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A section of the Bayeux Tapestry (1070s), showing William the Conqueror [centre], with his half-brothers Odo of Bayeux and Count Robert of Mortain.

William was born around 1027, the illegitimate son of Duke Robert of Normandy and Herleva, a tanner's daughter. His father died when he was eight, and he faced great opposition to his becoming Duke due to his illegitimacy, but this was swiftly dealt with when he became a young man. In 1051 he married Matilda of Flanders, daughter of the Count of Flanders, which was one of Normandy's most powerful neighbours.

In 1064, Harold Godwinson was shipwrecked on the shores of Normandy, where he reluctantly became William's guest. William allowed him to return hom only after extracting an oath to help him obtain the throne of England when Edward the Confessor died. When Edward died two years later, Harold was put on the throne, and William was furious that he had broken his promise. All his nobles, except for William FitzOsbern, told him that invading England would be far too risky, but he was not to be dissuaded.

After two false starts, the Normans landed at Pevensey. Harold's army was busy fending off the invasion of Harald Hardrada, King of Norway. While this was going on, the Normans moved a few miles east to Hasting, where they built a castle and ravaged the country inland, which would force the English to attack them before their own supplies ran low.

Harold's army won the Battle of Stamford Bridge against the Norwegians, and had to head south to then deal with William. They set up a defensive position on a steep hill about seven miles north-west of Hastings, with marshy streams guarding both their flanks. This was bad news for the Normans – to advance would be suicide, but they couldn't retreat either. William ordered them to attack.

They were repulsed several times, and began to retreat in panic, which drew the English down from the hill. William pulled his helmet off to show his men he was still alive, rallying his forces and turning the tide of the battle. The Normans had many archers and a large cavalry, which the English lacked. Harold was killed (probably from an arrow through the eye), leaving his men leaderless. They fled into the forest.

William now followed up his victory by advancing to Wallingford and thence to London, where he was crowned on Christmas Day at Westminster Abbey.

On the morning of September 28, 1066, nearly a thousand double-ended, open longboats, each mounting a single square sail, suddenly appeared off the coast of England at Pevensey, about forty miles south-west of Dover. As the boats ran up on to the beach, some seven thousand armed men leaped from them and waded ashore. The army of Duke William of Normandy, after waiting weeks for a favourable wind, had crossed seventy miles of water in a single night to enforce their leader's claim to the English throne. Recruited not only from his own vassals in Normandy, but from mercenaries and adventurers throughout northern France and even farther away, it was for the 11th century not only a very large but an exceptionally well-disciplined force, a tribute to the authority as well as the financial resources of Duke William. England had seen many seaborne invading forces, but probably never one this large. A novel feature of Duke William's amphibious army was its horses, no fewer than three thousand of which had been successfully ferried across the Channel by means of a technique – probably some kind of sling-harness – that Norman soldiers of fortune apparently learned from the Byzantine Greeks. Carried in the flotilla was a prefabricated fort, the timbers cut, shaped, framed, and pinned together in France, dismantled, packed in great barrels, and loaded on the ships. Disembarking at Pevensey, the Normans had the reassembled fort complete by evening.

Life in a Medieval Castle