Burgstall Schlossgraben

The Burgstall Schlossgraben is a ruined medieval water castle near Westheim in Mittelfranken. It stands in a low-lying area beside the Finkenbach stream on the northern edge of the Auwald forest. Only earthworks and a disturbed mound remain of the once-water-filled ring ditch and outer walls. The site is worth visiting for its archaeology and landscape setting. It was probably built in the late 11th century by the Lords of Auhausen, ministerials who later moved to Lobdeburg in Thuringia. The castle declined soon after, with no further records after about 1133. Today it lies beside one of the largest barrow fields in Mittelfranken, where over 140 burial mounds dot the surrounding countryside. Visitors find a two-part earthwork. The roughly oval mound, about twenty metres across, is surrounded by a former moat up to twenty metres wide. To the northwest lies the larger forecourt, now farmland, with traces of an old rampart. South of the mound a square pit once held water, its spoil forming a low surrounding bank. The whole scene is quiet, with the forest and stream giving a sense of how the medieval castle once stood in its watery setting.