Eaton Socon Castle

Eaton Socon Castle was a Norman motte-and-bailey fort built beside the River Great Ouse in what is now Eaton Socon, Cambridgeshire. Hugh de Beauchamp, a Norman landowner based in Bedford, acquired the manor around 1120 and probably erected the castle in 1140 during the civil war between King Stephen and Empress Matilda. The castle was never finished and consisted of timber buildings on an earthen mound with a wooden watch-tower. After Henry Plantagenet became king in 1154, he ordered the destruction of all unauthorised castles, and Eaton Socon was likely demolished at that time. By the 13th century only fragments of pottery and traces of buildings remained, though Lady Juliana de Beauchamp is recorded as living there. The castle occupied a double enclosure that required the demolition of Anglo-Saxon houses and was surrounded by a moat fed from the river. An early plan shows a complex layout with a ringwork, bailey, and outer court enclosed by deep ditches. Historic England describe the site as a Norman ringwork overlying part of a late Saxon village which was partly abandoned to make way for the stronghold. The ringwork later served as the base for a windmill before becoming a grassy earthwork known as Castle Hills. Today the remains form a scheduled ancient monument called The Hillings. The site lies on a gravel terrace on the west bank of the River Great Ouse and includes a water-filled ditch up to 20 metres wide and 1.5 metres deep along the western and southern sides. A narrow causeway crosses the junction of the ditches at the north-west corner, and a shallower dry ditch separates the stronghold from the bailey. The earthworks are not open to the public as they lie within the grounds of a private residence.