Skipsea Castle

The mound the Norman castle sits on was raised long before any Norman saw it. It is an Iron Age structure of construction comparable to Silbury Hill in Wiltshire, and core sample drilling into its interior in 2016 recovered seeds and other organic matter that dated the building of it to around 400 BC.

Skipsea Castle was built around 1086 by Drogo de la Beuvrière, a Flemish mercenary and the first Lord of Holderness, in the years after the Norman Conquest and the Harrying of the North. The region sat on the frontier of Norman power, and the lordship was intended to protect central Yorkshire against Danish raids across the North Sea. Skipsea was the administrative centre of estates running from the Humber to Bridlington and Drogo's caput, or principal residence.

Drogo settled ten knights on lands near the castle under a castlery, or castle-guard, arrangement: the knights helped guard the castle in return for their estates, and one of them probably raised his own smaller fortification at nearby Aldborough. Drogo himself did not last. After the suspicious death of his wife he fled England, and William the Conqueror reassigned the castle to Odo, Count of Aumale.

The castle passed to Arnulf de Montgomery in 1096 and returned to the Aumales in 1102, who held it until 1221. It lay on the main trading route through the marshes and was reachable by sea, designed both to hold the newly conquered lands and to manage traffic in and out of an inland harbour. The name Skipsea has Scandinavian roots and meant a lake navigable by ships; a dam was probably thrown across the low, marshy ground to create the artificial lake called Skipsea Mere, which a channel connected to a North Sea now only about two kilometres away. The complex had its own private harbour, and probably a boat yard and a fresh-water fishery.

By the end of the 11th century a church stood east of the castle across the mere, and the village of Skipsea grew up beside it. Trade initially flourished, and as a result William le Gros founded the fortified town of Skipsea Brough along the ridgeway just south of the castle, probably around 1160; besides bringing revenue to the earls it would have helped defend the castle on its most vulnerable, overlooked side. The castle-guard system lapsed, the surrounding estates paying their rents in cash instead.

After around 1200 the castle declined in importance: it was poorly situated, the threat of Danish raids had passed, and so the nearby manor of Burstwick became the lordship's administrative centre instead. In January 1220 William de Forz, Count of Aumale by marriage, rebelled against Henry III. Part of the dispute concerned the estate of Driffield, eleven miles away, which Henry had seized the previous year, though William had been at odds with the king's policies for several years before that. William was promptly excommunicated. The northern barons were ordered to besiege his castles, Skipsea among them, and William shortly surrendered himself to the king and was ultimately pardoned.

Henry ordered Skipsea Castle destroyed after the rebellion, although how far the order was actually carried out is uncertain; the break in the bailey earthworks now called Scotch Gap was cut during the castle's 13th-century destruction. William passed the castle to his own son, another William, and on the death of his son's widow Isabella it went to the Crown in 1293.

Skipsea Brough never took hold as a commercial site, probably because of its poor location. Only three burgesses paid rent there in 1260, and by the late 14th century the town was largely abandoned; the poll tax of 1377 registered just 95 people across Skipsea and Skipsea Brough together. Skipsea Mere was drained in the second half of the 14th century and by 1397 the castle was reckoned worthless, the twenty acres around it turned over to pasture.

Further drainage around 1720 reclaimed the mere's bed for farming, though the ground remained marshy and still flooded occasionally at the start of the 20th century. In 1911 the castle was placed in the guardianship of the Commissioners of Works and Public Buildings, later passing to English Heritage, which manages the site and opens it to visitors; it is protected as a scheduled monument under UK law. Archaeological surveys followed in 1987, 1988, 1992 and 2001. Between 2010 and 2014 English Heritage raised concerns about the earthworks' condition and about the effect of drainage, and the drying out of the land it caused, upon them.