En un regard
Le château en bref
Cymbeline's Castle is a Norman motte-and-bailey castle with two baileys. It occupies the tip of a spur below Beacon Hill, on the northern edge of the Chiltern escarpment, about 550 m south-west of Ellesborough church (Buckinghamshire). The site overlooks the villages of Ellesborough and Little Kimble, offers wide views across the Vale of Aylesbury and commands the routes that ran along the escarpment.
The conical motte, about 42 m in diameter, rises 6 to 8 m above the slope. Its flattened summit, some fifteen metres across, carried a timber tower. A ditch surrounds three-quarters of its circumference. To the south, a roughly square bailey about 40 m across is protected by a ditch, a massive internal bank and an artificial scarp. A second, rectangular bailey of about 48 × 20 m was added to the north. A terraced track and an embanked hollow way descend to the foot of the escarpment and mark the original approach. Pottery sherds of the 13th to 15th centuries attest to prolonged use.
The name, recorded since the mid-19th century, refers to a local tradition that the Iron Age king Cunobelinus, Shakespeare's Cymbeline, lived in these hills. Historic England considers it more likely a Victorian invention. Scheduled in 1995, the site is regarded as exceptionally well preserved.
