Shotwick Castle
Shotwick Castle is a ruined castle near the village of Saughall in the English administrative division of Cheshire West and Chester . The construction of the Anglo-Norman moth began at the end of the 11th century. Their job was to control the ford on the River Dee between England and Wales . Today only earthworks remain. The site is a Scheduled Monument .
history
Hugh Lupus , 1st Earl of Chester , had a castle built in Shotwick around 1093. It lay on a headland , the steep banks of which were formed by two watercourses that then flowed into the River Dee. The castle consisted of a hexagonal mound made of earth and had an outer castle . It also had two large defensive trenches , 25 meters wide and 3 meters deep, which were full of water at high tide. The main purpose of the castle was to control movement over the tidal ford that once existed at this point in the original course of the river.
The Earls of Chester, like Ranulf de Blondeville , had borne the cost of maintaining the defenses in the 12th and early 13th centuries. Both King Henry II and Henry III. stayed at the castle at the time of their attacks on the Welsh people . In 1237 Shotwick Castle was one of many castles owned by the Earldom of Chester that were requisitioned by the Crown after the death of John, 7th Earl of Chester . After the Anglo-Scottish magnate died childless, his sisters were forced to give some of his lands and belongings to Henry III. submit. In September 1284 King Edward I visited the now royal castle on his way from Chester Castle to Flint Castle after his second campaign against Wales . But then, with the end of hostilities with Wales, the castle lost its strategic importance. By 1327 the land around Shotwick Castle was turned into a deer park for King Edward III. who used the castle as a hunting lodge . Part of the outer bailey and the moats were redesigned as a landscape garden and pond landscape. When the Black Prince visited the castle in 1353, there was no longer even a garrison housed there and it was called a “mansion” and no longer a castle. The last major repair work is documented for 1371. The landscaped garden was created at roughly the same time as that of Bodiam Castle in East Sussex , which was completed in 1384.
Shotwick Castle was in ruins by the 17th century and the site became Shotwick Park .
archeology
In 1876 the local schoolmaster, a certain Williams , carried out partial excavations on the castle grounds, where he found glazed earthenware, a spur and fragments of deer horns. Today there is little to see of the former castle, only a few earthworks have been preserved. A survey of the earthworks in the 1990s brought to light evidence that a country house with ornamental gardens had been built there in the late Middle Ages .
Individual references and comments
- ↑ a b Shotwick Castle . Pastscape. Historic England. English Heritage. Retrieved August 29, 2016.
- ↑ Shotwick Motte and Bailey and late Medieval Garden Remains . Revealing Cheshire's Past. Retrieved August 29, 2016.
- ↑ Shotwick Mott and Bailey and late Medieval Garden Remains . Historic England. English Heritage. Retrieved August 29, 2016.
- ↑ a b c History of Saughall . Saughall & Shotwick Parish Council. Archived from the original on September 28, 2007. Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved May 10, 2007.
- ↑ In the 18th century the river was diverted to the south and has since run in an artificial canal.
- ^ A b Plantagenet Somerset Fry: The David and Charles Book of Castles . David & Charles, Newton Abbott 1980. ISBN 0-7153-7976-3 . P. 297.
- ^ Adrian Pettifer: English Castles: A Guide by Counties . Boydell & Brewer. 2002. Retrieved August 29, 2016.
- ^ Charles Cawley, England, earls created 1067-1122 . Foundation for Medieval Genealogy. Retrieved August 29, 2016.
Coordinates: 53 ° 13 ′ 36.8 " N , 2 ° 58 ′ 32.5" W.