Castlehaw, Sedbergh

Castlehaw (castle hill) gets its name from being the remains of a Norman motte and bailey castle, Built across the country after the Norman conquest of 1066 they were often the home of a Norman landowner who held the land in the name of the king.
Motte and baileys were built on natural mounds, which were built up using blocks of stone plus soil into a cone shape with a flat top. This part is the motte, and is shown in my photo. Usually a defensive tower would be constructed on top of a motte, surrounded by a ditch or wodden fence. The bailey was a flattened area usually oval shaped at the base of the motte. Here there would be domestic buildings. At Castlehaw the bailey is also raised up on a mound, another method of construction would be to surround it with a ditch instead. Not much is known about the specific history of the inhabitants of Castlehaw. It found use in WW2 as a "Granite post" by the Royal Observation Corp, which was an observation station that gave warning to allied aircraft of the nearby hills, using flares. Between 1965 and 1968 a compact underground bunker was constructed by the corp as a low level monitoring station in case of nuclear strike. It would monitor the movement of fallout. Thankfully it never had to do that job!