Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington after "half a lifetime together, they had come to understand each other at the end". He had found consolation for his unhappy marriage in his warm friendship with the diarist Harriet Arbuthnot, wife of his colleague Charles Arbuthnot. Harriet's death in the cholera epidemic of 1834 was almost as great a blow to Wellington as it was to her husband. The two widowers spent their last years together at Apsley House. Wellington died at Walmer Castle in Deal on 14 September 1852. This was his residence as Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports. Walmer Castle was said to have been
Deal Castle of Dorset, Lionel Sackville and there may have been some competition between the two men. The keep was redesigned with medieval-style battlements and wood-panelled accommodation at the rear overlooking the sea; the porter's lodge was also updated. During the Napoleonic Wars, the castle was armed with nine 36-pounder guns, supported by further artillery batteries placed along the beach. To protect Deal, units of infantry and cavalry, called fencibles, were formed in 1794 by William Pitt the Younger – then both the Prime Minister and the Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports – and in 1802 units of bombardiers recruited by