Asseburg

The Asseburg is a vanished ringwall near Wassel in the Leine valley. Its low grassy banks still mark a circle about seventy metres wide on an arable field at the south-west edge of the village. The once steep earth rampart and outer ditch were levelled by ploughing in the early 20th century, yet aerial photographs from 1934 onwards show their buried traces as darker soil marks.

The site may have been raised by the Counts of Wassel in the early or high Middle Ages, for it resembles nearby Heisterburg and Burg Heeßel. After the family died out in the 12th century the place was remembered as the Artborch, a castle held as a Hildesheim bishop’s fief by the Lords of Gleidingen in 1458. No excavation has ever taken place, so its builders, purpose and exact age remain unknown.

Visitors today walk a gentle loop across the ploughed field where the vanished rampart once stood. In spring and autumn the buried ditch and bank show up as faint undulations in the soil. From the centre of the circle there is a wide view over the surrounding farmland and, on clear days, the rim of the Harz hills to the south.