Ships within metres
The harbour mouth is so narrow that Royal Navy frigates, ferries and cruise ships pass right beneath the wall you stand on.
From the roof of this tower, warships pass a few metres from you, not on some distant horizon as in most harbours. The mouth of Portsmouth Harbour is only a few hundred metres wide here, and everything entering or leaving the Royal Navy base, from frigates and ferries to cruise ships, slides past the old stonework almost close enough to touch. That is precisely why the tower exists. Henry V ordered it built in timber between 1418 and 1426, and an iron chain could be hauled up from it across the harbour entrance to shut out an enemy fleet. It was rebuilt in stone in the 1490s, joined to the Square Tower by a line of ramparts in the 1680s, and given a gun platform on its roof between 1847 and 1850. Be clear about what this is not: there is no museum and no interior exhibition. The vaulted room inside is now a venue hired out for events. What you actually visit is the roof and the adjoining rampart known as the Hot Walls, both open public space all day, every day, with no ticket and no gate. A few stone steps take you onto the rampart and a further flight to the top of the tower, where the Isle of Wight, Spitbank Fort and the whole traffic of the harbour lie in front of you. The climb is short but rules out pushchairs, and on a windy day the roof is completely exposed. Below the rampart, in the brick arches of the old Point Battery, the Hotwalls Studios house working craftspeople and artists. Each keeps their own hours, so some doors will be open and others shut depending on the day; on the first Sunday of every month they all open together from 11:00 to 16:00. The Canteen cafe alongside runs 08:00 to 16:00 daily on the waterfront, and the whole row is a pleasant place to pick up a souvenir that was not made somewhere else. The quarter around it, Old Portsmouth, is stone lanes and sea walls, five minutes on foot from the Cathedral and roughly twenty from Portsmouth Harbour station via the footbridge from Gunwharf Quays. Timing is everything. On a summer evening families sit along the wall waiting for a ferry to pass or the sun to drop into the water, and half an hour here becomes one of the memories of the trip. In a grey English winter it is wind and rain and little else, worth a stop only if you are already in Old Portsmouth or heading to the Historic Dockyard. Do not make a separate journey for it; let it close a walk along the walls with the Square Tower and Spice Island.
The harbour mouth is so narrow that Royal Navy frigates, ferries and cruise ships pass right beneath the wall you stand on.
The old sea wall linking the Round Tower to the Square Tower is the best free seat in the city for sunset.
The battery arches under the rampart now hold working craft studios on artist-set hours, with The Canteen cafe open daily.
Broad Street, Old Portsmouth, PO1 2FS
Both together make a good full day. The tower needs no more than half an hour, and watching a warship pass right below the roof holds children better than most exhibitions. Leave the pushchair behind though, the steps are stone and narrow, and on a wet or windy day skip it and go straight to the Dockyard.
Not normally. The vaulted room inside is hired out for exhibitions and events and only opens to the public when something is on. What is always open is the roof and the surrounding rampart, which is the point of the visit anyway.