Scarborough Castle

En un regard

Le château en bref

Scarborough Castle occupies a rocky headland rising between the town's two bays, on the North Yorkshire coast. Protected on three sides by cliffs plunging into the North Sea, the site can only be reached by a narrow isthmus, cut off from the 12th century onwards by a ditch and later by a barbican and a two-span bridge. The interest of the site goes far beyond the medieval fortress: the plateau has yielded traces of a Late Bronze Age and Iron Age settlement, the foundations of a late 4th-century Roman signal station, and then those of a chapel from around the year 1000. The royal castle, with Henry II's great square keep, its long curtain wall with semicircular towers and its immense bailey, makes it one of the major strongholds of northern England. Ruined by the sieges of the Civil War, the site still served as a barracks and coastal battery in the 18th century and was shelled by the German navy in 1914. Owned by the Crown, it is managed by English Heritage and open to visitors.