What is recorded here

Westgate Castle guarded the western entrance to the Bishop of Durham’s deer park from the 13th century until the early 17th, acting as an administrative heart for the old Forest of Weardale. Its stones were stripped for new buildings by the mid-17th century, yet geophysical surveys now hint that substantial walls still sleep buried beneath the soil. The castle disappeared from sight but never from importance, waiting for careful hands to reveal how much of its frame remains hidden below.

The National Heritage List for England records Westgate Castle as a scheduled monument. The saved point comes from the centre supplied by the official record. Listing does not by itself mean that the public may enter the place.

Westgate Castle was built in the 13th century by the Bishop of Durham as a defensive structure to control the strategic crossing point of the River Tyne at Westgate. It is important as a rare example of a medieval episcopal castle and as a key site in the history of Anglo-Scottish border conflicts.

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