Burgstall Schenkensee

The Burgstall bei den Schenkenseen stands in a quiet valley south-east of Markertshofen in the Schwäbisch Hall district. A small mound marks the site of a once-towered medieval castle, built perhaps in the 12th or 13th century. No records tell who raised it, who lived there or why it vanished. The only clue is its name ‘Neukottspiel’ from 14th-century tax rolls, linking it to the local lords of Kottspiel. By 1419 the Hohenlohe counts had taken the estate, and later maps show the hill called Kotzbühel and the woodland around it as ‘Altkottspiel’. The castle’s ditches and ramparts still circle the mound, showing how water and earth once defended the place. Today the mound rises beside the upper Schenkensee, one of two fishponds created in the 16th century. Two wide ditches curve around the hill, the outer one 94 metres long and the inner one cut deep into sandstone. The central platform slopes gently northwards to a six-metre drop above the water. No walls remain, only grass and the memory of a vanished stronghold.