Civil War Skirmishes

1643

During the English Civil War, the Havant area saw military activity as Parliamentary and Royalist forces contested control of the Hampshire coast. Warblington Castle was besieged and further damaged during the conflict. The town of Havant itself was of minor strategic importance compared to the major garrison at Portsmouth, but troops passed through the area and the local population experienced the disruption, requisitioning and violence that the war brought to communities across England. The damage to Warblington Castle during the Civil War ensured that the building would never be restored, and the ruins visible today are in part a consequence of the seventeenth-century conflict.