Huntingdon Castle

Castle Hill in Huntingdonshire rose from an Anglo-Saxon burh into a motte and bailey castle in 1068, occupying two and a half acres beside the River Ouse. Henry II slighted it in 1174 after a month-long siege, pulling down walls and leaving behind a burnt gatehouse whose ash still lay three feet deep when workers cut Castle Moat Road. The chapel survived into the fourteenth century, the gaol into the fourteenth and fifteenth, and the levelled ground became a gun battery before returning to ordinary life.