Beeston Castle

Beeston was built in the 1220s for Ranulf de Blondeville, 6th Earl of Chester, shortly after his return from the Fifth Crusade — one of three major castles he raised in those years, alongside Bolingbroke in Lincolnshire and Chartley in Staffordshire, all sharing similar tower designs. Medieval documents call it Castellum de Rupe, the Castle on the Rock, and the name is literal: it sits on a sandstone crag 350 feet above the Cheshire Plain, its outer bailey walls sited to reuse the rampart of an Iron Age hill fort already on the crag.

Unlike most castles of its period Beeston has no keep. The natural drops, massive walls, strong gatehouses and carefully positioned towers made the baileys themselves the stronghold: a rectangular inner castle on the summit with a sheer fall on three sides and a rock-cut ditch up to 30 feet deep on the fourth, and an outer bailey on the lower slopes whose gatehouse stood behind a ditch 16 feet wide and 10 feet deep. The outer walls, six feet thick and faced in sandstone, carried open-backed D-shaped towers — an innovation in English castles at the time, letting defenders shoot along the walls while denying cover to attackers who broke in. Two wells were cut into the rock; one, at 370 feet, is among the deepest castle wells in England.

Most of the defences were complete when Ranulf died in 1232, but no living quarters had been built, and none had been added when his successor John died without a male heir in 1237 — allowing King Henry III to take over the Earldom of Cheshire. Henry enlarged Beeston during his wars with Wales and used it as a prison for Welsh captives, yet no halls or chambers were ever raised; garrisons were probably housed in wooden buildings in the outer bailey.

In 1254 Henry gave Beeston and other Cheshire lands to his son Prince Edward, together with the title Earl of Chester — conferred on the heir to the English throne ever since. During the Montfortian rebellion the castle was retaken from the rebels in 1265 by James de Audley and Urian de Saint Pierre, after Edward's escape from captivity. The Crown kept Beeston in repair through Edward's reign and the 14th century, when Cheshire men served as its constables, but by the 16th century it was judged of no further military use, and in 1602 it was sold to Sir Hugh Beeston of Beeston Hall.

Persistent rumour holds that Richard II hid part of his personal treasure at Beeston in 1399, on his way to Chester before sailing to Ireland to put down a rebellion. He was deposed on his return by Henry, Duke of Lancaster, the future Henry IV, and the hoard is said to have lain undiscovered ever since. Many searches have been made, most probing the deep well in the inner bailey, and nothing has ever been found — though the tale may not be well founded, since Henry IV is recorded as having recovered Richard's gold and jewellery from its various hiding places.

The Civil War pressed the neglected castle back into service. Parliamentary forces under Sir William Brereton seized Beeston on 20 February 1643, repairing the walls. Part of the royal army of Ireland having landed at Chester that year, Captain Thomas Sandford and just eight soldiers crept into the castle at night on 13 December — possibly aided by treachery — and surprised the governor, Captain Thomas Steele, who was so shaken that he surrendered on the promise of marching out with honours. Steele was tried and shot for failing to hold the castle.

The Royalist garrison then withstood a parliamentary siege from November 1644 until November 1645, when want of food forced surrender. In 1646 the castle was slighted under Cromwell's destruction order, to end its use as a stronghold.

In the late 17th century Sir Thomas Grosvenor had Eaton Hall built by William Samwell, arranged so that the hall's occupants looked out towards Beeston's ruins. The 18th century was less kind: the grounds were quarried, and the outer gatehouse was demolished to make a track for carting the stone away. In 1840 the castle passed to John Tollemache, then the largest landowner in Cheshire, and in the mid-19th century it hosted an annual two-day fete for local widows and orphans that drew more than 3,000 visitors a day. The ruins are now a Scheduled Ancient Monument in the care of English Heritage.