Blobb Hill Castle

En un regard

Le château en bref

Blobb Hill is the local name for the motte of Aldford Castle, a Cheshire village about eight kilometres south of Chester, near the Dee and on the edge of the Grosvenors' Eaton estate. The mound rises north of St John's Church, built over a filled-in ditch of the former bailey, and controlled a river crossing used since Roman times. Raised around the middle of the 12th century, the castle belonged to a group of mottes in western Cheshire intended to contain Welsh raids. It was later refortified in stone by the Aldford family, then passed in the early 13th century to the Ardernes, before falling to the Stanleys in 1464 and to Sir William Brereton in the 16th century. Fallen into ruin by the 18th century, the site was incorporated by the Grosvenors into the landscape of their estate: plantings, a water-filled ditch and a small cistern or bath building. Remarkably well-preserved earthworks and some foundations of the stone shell wall survive, protected as a scheduled monument and not open to the public.