New Castle Fort Constitution
— — the small fort the colonists hit first.
Not only on a wall.
“Low granite walls and a brick gate at the end of New Castle Island, looking across the Piscataqua toward Kittery. Built in the 1600s as Fort William and Mary, the post was raided by about 400 New Hampshire patriots on December 14, 1774, four months before Lexington, and emptied of its gunpowder. The 1808 walls, the 1862 brickwork, and the 1898 Endicott batteries are still here, weathered by Atlantic salt. — from the studio
New Castle Fort Constitution, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Fort Constitution sits on the eastern point of New Castle Island in Rockingham County, guarding the mouth of the Piscataqua River about three miles east of downtown Portsmouth. The site was first fortified by the English colonists around 1631 and became Fort William and Mary in 1694. It was rebuilt and renamed Fort Constitution in 1808 under President Jefferson's second-system coastal program. The state historic site is co-located with the Portsmouth Harbor Light, an active Coast Guard station, and the U.S. Coast Guard Station Portsmouth Harbor.
The fort is read in three layers. The 1808 second-system walls are coursed granite ashlar from local Seacoast quarries, low and angled to deflect cannon shot. The 1862 Civil War rebuild added red brick scarp walls and an arched sally port that still carries its iron-bound timber door. Above the older works, two concrete Endicott-era batteries from 1898 sit half-buried in the turf, with the magazine doors and gun emplacements intact. The Portsmouth Harbor Light tower beside the fort dates to 1878 in cast iron.
December 14, 1774 is the anniversary the town keeps. On that night about 400 patriots under John Langdon and John Sullivan rowed out from Portsmouth, overpowered Captain John Cochran and five soldiers, and removed roughly 100 barrels of gunpowder from the magazine, four months before Lexington and Concord. Paul Revere had ridden up from Boston the day before with the warning. The town of New Castle commemorates the raid each December with a wreath-laying at the fort and a candlelight walk from Great Island Common.