Worksop Castle

Heritage listing

Details The castle at Worksop is situated on a sandstone promontory overlooking the valley of the River Ryton. The monument includes the motte or castle mound, part of the surrounding ditch and an outwork on the west side. A bailey or outer enclosure would formerly have extended into the surrounding area and been the location of features such as ancillary and garrison buildings and corrals for stock and horses. Although archaeological remains relating to the bailey are likely to survive beneath modern urban development, they have not been included in the scheduling as their extent and state of preservation is not sufficiently understood. The growth of the modern town has concealed the strategic location of the castle, but originally it was built to command the surrounding land and the marshy river valley to the north. According to Domesday Book, the land was held by the Saxon lord Elsi prior to 1066 and it is believed that a Saxon fortification may have preceded the Norman castle. The first Norman castle was probably built by Roger de Busli in the late eleventh century. Initially it would have comprised a timber keep or stockade but this had been rebuilt in stone by the end of the twelfth century under the lordship of the de Lovetots. The form of the stone castle is not fully understood because, by the sixteenth century, it had been demolished and only the foundations will now survive on the castle mound. The appearance of the motte, however, indicates that it would have been a shell keep. The motte is a flat-topped earthwork roughly 50m in diameter and stands between 10m and 12m high above the base of the surrounding ditch. On the north-east side, erosion has exposed the construction material and shows that an artificial layer 2-2.5m thick, was built on top of natural

From the Historic England List Entry under OGL v3.