West wall (exterior)

This is the best surviving part of the castle, it is massively built, nearly two metres thick, and was designed to withstand the weaponry of the period.

At the top are projecting stones, corbels, these would have supported a machicolated parapet, which would have projected out from the wall. Defenders could not only shoot at anybody attacking the castle, but between the corbels there would have been holes so that objects could have been dropped onto any attackers who had reached the base of the wall.

The wall is marked with a number of holes, rectangular and round. The rectangular ones are putlog holes, these would have held the wooden scaffolding, when the castle was built. When the scaffolding was removed the holes would have been plugged with small stones, to give an even finish to the wall. The stones would have been held in with lime mortar and have dropped out over the years.

The round holes are gunports, out of these holes early handguns would have been fired. As these gunports are part of the original building, this makes Rufus Castle one of the earliest buildings to have been designed with gunpowder weapons in mind.

Archway and Bridge

Penn began by building a bridge across a small gorge, which was probably natural but may have been reshaped to provide a dry moat for the castle. This bridge provided easy access to the ruins, through an archway cut in the north wall, which removed the bottom of one of the embrasures. A later story claims that a small carriage could be driven through the arch into the ruins.

Penn probably also repaired and reinforced the South East wall, as buttresses have been added to the exterior. The small doorway may have also been blocked at this time.

To the south west a second archway was also added, though this collapsed in the late twentieth century. This archway framed an impressive view across the cove, towards Pennsylvania Castle.

In other places, deliberately designed viewing ‘stations’ were built for people to enjoy particularly fine views, Rufus Castle is unusual in that an old building has been recycled for this purpose. To fully appreciate a mirror you might use a ‘Claude Glass’, named after the Italian landscape painter Claude Lorraine. These glasses were either specially designed mirrors, in which a view could be carefully framed, or coloured filters to give the effect of looking at view at different seasons or times of day.

At the same time the castle ruins were also appreciated as a romantic landscape feature, and were painted and drawn by many artists, including J.M.W. Turner in 1817.

During the twentieth century continued land movement, and the building of the railway, made access to the castle difficult and it fell into an even more ruinous state.

Interior

The north and west wall are massively built, and were outer walls of the castle. The south east wall is much thinner and was probably an internal wall of the castle. Now it stands right on the edge of the cliff, and suggests how much of the castle has fallen away. At the southern end of this wall are traces of a blocked door, if it were still open it would lead straight onto the top of the cliff.

Inside you can appreciate the unusual shape of this fragment of the castle, the ground plan of the castle was probably determined by the shape of the rock outcrop on which it was built.