The chapel that had existed in the castle of San Felipe had been covered by successive demolitions and remained hidden until recently. Discovering it was possible thanks to Philip Denis, who brought a map from the British archive of Kew Gardens, in London, which facilitated its location.
It is documented that in 1589 the chapel was already in operation and that King Felipe II in 1582 contributed 30 ducats for its ornamentation.
The chapel had 2 vault keys, one with the papal tiara and the other with the coat of arms of Spain. It consisted of a main nave and 2 side chapels and was located in a corner of the castle’s parade ground.
During the English domination the hermitage of the suburb became the main place for the celebration of masses, to the detriment of the castle chapel.
As was customary in Spain, burials used to be made inside chapels until well into the mid-nineteenth century, and although the British used to make them outside of it, several headstones, from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, have been found, some with inscriptions in English. . Only those tombstones that were not in danger of being degraded have been left “in situ”; the rest are deposited in the Military Museum.