Stones from King Henry VIII's long-lost Sandown Castle have been rediscovered hiding in plain sight nine miles (14.5km) down the coast at Dover Castle.
A new archaeological study found that stone blocks from the 16th-century fortress were reused to build part of Dover Castle.
Researchers uncovered a previously unknown report from 1883 stating that materials from Sandown were being sold off and sent to Dover.
The chunks of masonry from Henry VIII's maritime defences now form part of the Constable's Gate at Dover, which provided quarters for the castle's commanding officer.
After Sandown Castle fell victim to coastal erosion in the 1800s, its valuable stones were sold off to form everything from coastal defences to a pier at Deal.
However, until now, this hidden connection to Britain's most famous castle had gone totally unnoticed.
"When you stand beside the Victorian extension at Constable's Gate and realise that parts of its masonry came from Sandown Castle, a fort Henry VIII built and the sea later claimed, it sends chills down your spine," Dr Moore said.
"It's a tangible connection across centuries of history."
The Castles of the Downs
Before the 1500s, the Crown typically felt that coastal defences were the responsibility of local lords and that raids from the sea were simply a manageable nuisance.
However, King Henry VIII broke with the Roman Catholic Church to divorce his wife, Catherine of Aragon, after he sought to obtain an annulment but the Pope refused. He introduced the act primarily because he needed a male heir to the throne and had been unable to produce one with Catherine.
According to the church at the time, a validly contracted marriage is indivisible until death.
The resulting Act of Supremacy in 1534 declared Henry "the only supreme head on Earth of the Church of England". Prior to 1534, the supreme head of the English Church was the Pope.
The act stated that Henry would enjoy "all honours, dignities, preeminences, jurisdictions, privileges, authorities, immunities, profits, and commodities to the said dignity."
It also required an oath of loyalty from English subjects recognising his marriage to Anne Boleyn. The act marked the beginning of the English Reformation and was repealed in 1554.
Tensions between England and Rome made the threat of invasion very real. France and the Holy Roman Empire forged a new alliance, and the Pope encouraged both powers to invade England to avenge the insult.
In response, Henry commissioned the construction of three state-of-the-art forts at Sandown, Walmer and Deal, which were collectively known as the "Castles of the Downs".
They were built for £27,092 at the time, the equivalent of more than £22 million today, and were meant to protect the critical landing point on the Kent coast.
Sandown featured a large keep and four circular bastions, decked out with positions for 39 artillery pieces and 31 handguns. It was fitted with special vents to carry away powder smoke.
Casualty of coastal erosion
The anticipated invasion never arrived, and Sandown did not see any actual fighting until it was seized by pro-Royalist insurgents in 1648 during the English Civil War.
It was not cannon fire or explosives that finally toppled the mighty fortress of Sandown. Instead, the castle was simply built too close to the sea, and rapid coastal erosion ate away at the ground beneath it.
By 1785, the sea started to breach the castle's outer defences, and by the 1860s the entire structure had to be abandoned.
The upper levels were destroyed with explosives and the foundations were encased in concrete to protect against further erosion.
Meanwhile, any blocks of stone that remained were sold off for various building projects around the country.
Dr Moore's previous research has traced those stones to Eastry Union Chapel, Walmer Castle and Deal's second pier abutment.
Using a combination of archival and archaeological research, he has now shown that some of the stones from Sandown also made their way to Dover.
"This sheds light on how Dover Castle's 19th-century works incorporated masonry from an earlier Tudor fortress," Dr Moore said.
"Sandown Castle is best known as a casualty of coastal erosion, but the documentary trail and the surviving fabric show that parts of it lived on at Dover Castle and at other sites across East Kent."
The Dissolution of the Monasteries
Shortly after the Act of Supremacy, Henry dissolved and disbanded monasteries throughout England, Wales and Ireland.
By the 1530s, at a time of increasing tensions between the Pope in Rome and King Henry VIII, monasteries were seen as corrupt and out of touch with the common people of England and Wales.
After detaching England, Wales and Ireland from the authority of the Roman Catholic Church, Henry's next step was to disband the monasteries. He did this partly to reform the church but also to strip the monasteries of their huge wealth.
A set of administrative and legal processes between 1536 and 1541 saw the king appropriate their income, dispose of their assets, and provide for their former personnel and functions.
