Images (3)
News (1)
Fieldnotes (1)
Folklore (1)
Topics (1)

Images

Image of Skipsea Castle (Artificial Mound) by Johnnyboy

The mound up close.

Image credit: Johnnyboy

Johnnyboy Feb 16, 2020

The ditch and bank around the mound – probably Norman, but the Brough has always been associated with water – it was separated from the bailey by the lake of Skipsea Mere (now dry except in bad weather,) and only accessible by causeway. Was the siting by a lake significant to the original builders?

Image credit: Johnnyboy

Johnnyboy Feb 16, 2020

Skipsea Brough

Image credit: Johnnyboy

Johnnyboy Feb 16, 2020

Articles

Skipsea Castle

Skipsea Castle based on Iron Age mound

Rhiannon Oct 3, 2016

4 comments

theguardian.com/science/2016/oct/03/skipsea-castle-yorkshire-built-on-iron-age-mound

Jim Leary spoke more about this on the Today programme at 6.55
( bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07wn3rq ). His team took a core down through the mound to ascertain its age, as part of the ‘Round Mounds’ project. They’ve been looking at others and he’s got others in mind for the future...
more details at
roundmoundsproject.wordpress.com/

4 Comments

Skipsea Castle

Artificial Mound

CARL Aug 7, 2017

Visited 5.8.17

Directions:
In the village of Skipsea. Signposted as it is an English Heritage site. You can park near the field gate which gives access to the site. You walk across a field and then through a second gate. The field had a herd of cows in it.

My main reason for visiting was to knock off another English Heritage site. I have been to many motte and bialy castles over the years but this is one of the most impressive. Both the motte and bails are very large. The views from the top of the motte are impressive over the surrounding flat countryside. I would heartily recommend visiting the site – just watch out for the cow pats!

Skipsea Castle

Artificial Mound

Johnnyboy Feb 16, 2020

1 comment

Skipsea, an out of the way Yorkshire village, on the sea-coast between Bridlington and Hornsea, is celebrated for one of the most enduring apparitions on record. “The White Lady of Skipsea”, as this phantom is styled, has haunted the old castle, of which, now-a-days, little more than the foundations remain, ever since the days of William the Conqueror.
This Skipsea ghost, whose local habitation no native of the place would venture near after nightfall, is described as haunting the Castle mound, and its vicinity, in the form of a beautiful young woman, of mournful aspect, attired in long white drapery.
Occasionally she may be seen flitting about the intrenchments or slopes of the Castle mound, and at times, even in the daylight, she is seen wandering about the precincts of what was formerly her home. No ill effects are reported to follow the appearance of this apparition, whose story is detailed by Mr. F. Ross in his interesting “Yorkshire Legends and Traditions”

—John Ingram, “The Haunted Homes and Family Traditions of Great Britain” (1897)

My own thoughts: Traditionally, the White Lady is supposedly the spirit of the wife of Drogo de Bevere, one of William the Conqueror’s knights, who was granted the surrounding lands by the new king. She was also the Conqueror’s niece, so when Drogo murdered her, he fled to Flanders before he could be punished. Her ghost has been seen ever since... but I’m wondering if she’s been around a long time before that!

(as an aside, during the 1970s and 80s I grew up nearby in Hornsea, and a girl in my class at secondary school who lived in Skipsea once claimed to have seen the White Lady “come out of a hedge” and walk across the road which skirts the bailey earthworks before vanishing. She was a bit of a hard-nut, not the sort you’d expect to be up on her medieval legends, but she was adamant about it!)

1 Comment