This is one of the castles which has suffered, from the point of view of the archaeologist, by having been in continual occupation since the Middle Ages. It has therefore been recast, from time to time, by residents who were desirous of light and comfort, after the days had passed in which military strength was the primary desideratum. In the Domesday Book (1086), Powderham is found in the hands of William of Eu, one of the rebels whom William Rufus crushed and mutilated in 1196. It then became the home of a knightly family who called themselves after its name. They built the original castle, probably in the thirteenth century, in an odd situation - in a rather low-lying position, less than half a mile from the broad salt-water estuary of the Exe. It neither commands the estuary, nor occupies the higher ground of the neighbourhood, that being the adjacent hill, where an eighteenth century owner reared the "Gothic" Belvedere which incautious passers-by have sometimes mistaken for the lower-lying castle.

John, the last of the Powderhams, was attainted in the reign of Edward I and his manor was granted to Humphrey Bohun, Earl of Hereford, who gave it as a marriage portion to his daughter, Margaret, when she married Hugh Courtenay, Earl of Devon. Earl Hugh did not incorporate it with his family estates, but passed it on as a separate holding to his younger son, Sir Philip Courtenay. Considering how rare is continuous male descent in the old landed families, it is worth noting that this knight's descendants have held Powderham in the male line from the time of Edward III till today. From this Philip Courtenay, the son of Margaret Bohun, came, by a queer freak in a patent, the present Earls of Devon. The story is worth noting. When Edward Courtenay, the prisoner in the Tower of London, was restored to his ancestors honours by Queen Mary in 1553, the document which set things right was drawn up in the form of the creation of a new Earldom of Devon. Now, nearly all Tudor patents were to heirs male, descending from the grantee, who was to have his peerage sibi et heredibus suis masculis de suo corpore in perpetuum. Apparently, by the error of a careless scribe, in this particular patent the words de suo corpore were left out. The restored Earldom was, therefore, given to Edward Courtenay and his heirs-male, whoever they might be and however distantly related. Edward died in exile only three years after and the restored Earldom was supposed to have died with him, no contemporary (as it seems) knowing of the abnormal wording of his patent. The title was unclaimed till 1830, though the exile had a very obvious heir male, Sir William Courtenay of Powderham, who descended directly from Earl Hugh (died 1337), the common ancestor of both the fifteenth and sixteenth century Earls and of the younger Powderham branch. But unless some one had chanced to look at the actual patent, there was no reason to suppose that this fact of relationship had any ulterior consequences.

The Courtenays of Powderham went on from 1556 to 1830 in a continual male descent, as important Devonshire magnates, obtaining, first a baronetcy in 1644, and then, in 1762, a Viscounty. They never claimed the Earldom, being, like the rest of the World, unaware that it had never ceased to exist. And the Cavendishes were given, by James I, the Earldom, and by William. III, the Dukedom of Devonshire, under the misconception that the title was at the disposition of the Crown. In 1830, the third Viscount Courtenay was apprised of the extraordinary wording of the patent of 1553, it is said, by his cousin, who chanced to be assistant-clerk of Parliaments at Westminster and so was accustomed to being consulted by persons searching through original documents for manifold purposes. He put in his claim to be heir male of Edward, who had died in 1556, and the House of Lords, on looking up the facts, decided that he and his ancestors had undoubtedly been Earls de jure for the last two hundred and eighty years. Hence the emergence of the long-forgotten title and the tiresome duplication of the names Devon and Devonshire in the peerage-roll of today. As the first restored Earl died childless, his successor was his cousin, the Clerk of Parliaments, who had dug up the patent of 1553.

The long line of Powderham Courtenays (mostly Williams, a christian name perpetuated for generations by elder sons) are responsible for the present state of their castle, which - as mentioned above - is more gratifying to the occupant than to the archaeologist. The main destroyer of antiquities would appear to have been the Sir William Courtenay of the days of George II, who, in the words of a contemporary county historian, "from an old castle made Powderham a noble seat." Another admirer of the first Lord Courtenay, "whose taste deserved every commendation," notes that he had greatly improved and ornamented the house. In particular, he had converted the chapel into "a very elegant drawing room" and done much else to change the ancient castle-like form of buildings. Not least, the erection the beautiful towered Belvedere on the adjacent height and replacement of the original entrance-hall by a magnificent staircase "by Jenkins," luxuriously ornamented with plaster reliefs.

The general effect of the present castle, therefore, is that of modernization, despite the battlemented outline which has still been preserved. There are ancient walls to be discovered, but the arrangement within is eighteenth century and, without, is eighteenth century striving to be a little Gothic. Even the gatehouse, the best looking part of the castle, is recorded to have been much altered in the restorations of 1750.

When artillery came into general use, in the sixteenth century, the castle was found to be so far from the shore that it did not command the estuary. A separate detached bulwark, or barbican, as Leland calls it, "to bete the haven," was therefore thrown up close to the water and furnished with guns. Today, it seems to have disappeared entirely.

Edited from Charles Oman's "Castles" (1926).