During the reign of Henry VIII, the castle was the property of Sir John Wyllshire, comptroller of the Town and Marches of Calais.
Eventually it passed back into the hands of the church and in the 17th century was owned by Dr Thomas Plume, Archdeacon of Rochester.
When he died in 1704 he bequeathed the castle to certain charitable organizations within the Rochester diocese.
ocated one mile south of Greenhithe and half a mile north of Watling
Street, the
Castle stands above a dry valley commanding good
views to both the north and east.
Dating from the mid 11th century, the castle was possibly erected without
license during the troubled reign of King Stephen, but was allowed to remain by Henry II on his accession to the throne.
The adjoining house is Georgian and was built onto the tower by Sir Richard Wiltshire. During the later part of
the 20th century the castle was converted from domestic to business use. Today the ground floor rooms of the main building are the
home of the Heritage Conference Center.
The sole remaining part
of the medieval castle is the
large rectangular tower
rising 40 feet high.
It consists of three storeys
and
was built almost entirely
from flint.
The center floor has since been converted into a chapel room with oak
paneling to the walls and an oak parquet floor. Access to the upper and lower floors is via a half-round stair turret located in the
north wall, with a small original lighting slit half way up, rising to a tiled conical cap just above roof level. There are other
various small openings in this wall, which have since been backed up with a modern fireplace, which may have replaced earlier ones
or might have been adapted to the shaft of a former latrine chute.
In Edward III's time, the castle was held over the Bishop of Rochester for half a knight's fee by
Sir John de Northwood
and the original Northwood Coat of Arms was still visible at the time the adjoining house was built. It is not known, unfortunately,
when the Northwood family first acquired it, or for how long they held it, but it later passed onto the Bonivant family.
