Bury Mount

En un regard

Le château en bref

Bury Mount is the castle motte of Towcester, Northamptonshire. It rises on the north-east side of the town, in a corner of the former Roman town of Lactodorum, with the River Tove bordering it to the north-east. Historic England regards it as a well-preserved example of a small round motte set in an urban location to control communication routes, including the old Watling Street. The steep-sided mound measures about 70 m in diameter and nearly 4 m in height. A ditch about 8 m wide and 3 m deep survives on the west side; it probably once surrounded the whole mound, which was crossed by a bridge. The castle is thought to have been raised by the Crown in the late 11th or the 12th century, at the centre of an extensive royal estate. Excavations have shown that a post-Conquest stone building preceded the earth and gravel motte. By the late Middle Ages the motte had been abandoned: a document of 1392 describes it as a tower mound surrounded by a moat. In November 1643, during the Civil War, Prince Rupert had its summit levelled to mount artillery, before the garrison was withdrawn in early 1644. The mound later served as a garden and as a landscape eye-catcher visible from Easton Neston park. Long overgrown, the motte has been cleared and reshaped: a spiral path now leads to the summit, and a footbridge crosses the Tove.