Beeston Castle and Woodland Park

Beeston Castle and Woodland Park

Beeston Castle and Woodland Park The medieval ruins of Beeston Castle stand on a rocky summit 500 feet above the Cheshire plain, with splendid views extending for 30 miles in all directions. The castle built in the 1220s by Ranulf, Earl of Chester, consisted of an outer ward with an imposing gatehouse and curtain wall, and an inner ward, which contained the most important accommodation but was never completed. What we see at Beeston today therefore represents the brooding hulk of a major medieval fortress without its domestic buildings.The ticket office, which resembles the medieval inner gatehouse, and the stone wall around the base of the crag were built in 1846 by Lord Tollemache, then owner of Beeston.In prehistoric times the outer ward was occupied by at least nine huts known as roundhouses. During the Middle Ages it was presumably filled with ancillary buildings for the castle, although there is little evidence for such structures.

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