Burgstall Schäfstoß

The medieval motte known as Burgstall Schäfstoß stands on flat land 300 metres west of the small hamlet of Schäfstoß in Horgau, Schwaben. It once guarded a bishop’s forest estate in the 14th century before being abandoned and levelled. A rescue dig in 1964 uncovered the remains of a timber building with a tiled roof and traces of fifty high-medieval pots.

Archaeologists found a thick layer of burning beneath the site, then earlier Iron Age pottery and a fibula from the 2nd–3rd centuries BC. Even older flint tools mark a Mesolithic hunting camp. In 1856 the royal forester Grimm dug here and recognised the medieval earthworks, recovering a lead spoon and two iron objects. A painted shield in nearby Oberschönenfeld monastery shows a woman in a boat with a three-pronged crown, thought to represent the family name.

Today the outline of the outer bailey rises gently among old oaks and pines. The central mound, once thirty-five metres square, was quarried away long ago. Two arms of the Roth stream once fed wet ditches around the site. The land still carries the classic shape of a high-medieval motte, one of several such ruins scattered across the Augsburg countryside.