Malpas Castle Hill

En un regard

Le château en bref

Malpas Castle Hill is the surviving mound of the Norman castle of the barons of Malpas, a small town in south-west Cheshire close to the Welsh border. The mound stands on a spur of the Broxton Hills, just north of St Oswald's Church, whose churchyard borders its southern and western flanks, and overlooks the town and the surrounding countryside. Raised around 1100, in the first decades after the Norman Conquest, the motte belonged to a network of earthwork fortifications intended to protect the farmland of southern Cheshire against Welsh raids and to establish the new feudal order. The timber castle has long since disappeared; the bailey, probably attached to the southern side, has been disturbed by the church and burials. All that remains today is a truncated, grassed earth cone about 3.7 metres high, in good condition, protected as a scheduled monument. The site can be seen from the public road and the neighbouring churchyard.