Whitwood Ferry Hill (The Gatehouse Record)

Also known as, or recorded in historical documents as;
Fairy Mount; Fairies Hill; Castle Hill

In the civil parish of Wakefield.
In the historic county of Yorkshire.
Modern Authority of Wakefield.
1974 county of West Yorkshire.
Medieval County of Yorkshire West Riding.

OS Map Grid Reference: SE39862489
Latitude 53.71890° Longitude -1.39849°

Whitwood Ferry Hill has been described as a probable Timber Castle.

There are earthwork remains.

This site is a scheduled monument protected by law.

Description

A motte, now only 22 ft high, with faint trace of a ditch round it, and a small brook to the south which may have been utilized for the bailey ditch, are all that remains of Castle Hill, Ferry Hill, on Fairy Mount. The site, by the Calder at Whitwood, is partly occupied by a mineral railway (VCH, 1912). "Fairies Hill", a large mound at SE 3986 2489 answers the description above, but appears to be entirely natural. There is certainly no trace of a ditch round it now (F1 RWE 13-NOV-63). De-Scheduled (English Heritage De-Scheduling Amendment 27/1/93). (PastScape)

Natural mound allegedly utilised as a motte. Now descheduled. (PastScape)

A recent small evaluation at Fairies Hill in Whitwood confirmed the identification of this site as a Norman castle. One evaluation trench was placed to clip the edge of the motte and examine its construction. This trench confirmed that the earthwork was built from differing layers of material in the same way as the construction of Hastings Castle is shown on the Bayeaux Tapestry. (Constable 2007)

Comments

Is this the site of a river crossing point as the name suggests? There is no apparent landscape evidence for this being a crossing point but the landscape is considerable changed by coal pits and associated spoil. Roger (Peitevin) is recorded in Domesday book as holding Whitwood as a mesne lord in 1086. The township is described as Robert de Lacy's demesne in the foundation charter of Pontefract Priory. The authenticity of this charter is doubtful, but if the statement about Whitwood's status was correct, the township may have been resumed into demesne by the end of C11. Holmes has suggested that alternatively the grant to Roger Peitevin may have been abortive. This doubt about the township's early tenural history means that on present evidence it cannot be decided who was responsible for the construction of the earthwork castle at Fairies Hill. There appears to be no basis for the statement that the township was in Roger le Peitevin's tenure in 1166. A sherd of C12 or C13 pottery was found there in 1977. Recorded as a castle site by Leland.
While there is good archaeological evidence some mottes were built in layers it is not at all certain that what is shown on the Bayeaux Tapestry is an example of this. Indeed it may well be that no motte at all is shown at Hastings but that what is pictured is men digging out a ditch below the existing Iron Age promontory fort bank, surmounted by a fence, with the 'layers' being merely decorative infill, the from dictated by the nature of embroidery.

Sources of information, references and further reading

Historic England (PastScape) Defra or Monument number(s) 52725.
County Historic Environment Record (or Sites and Monuments Record) number(s) 2097.

Books
- Salter, Mike, 2001, The Castles and Tower Houses of Yorkshire (Malvern: Folly Publications) p. 109
  King, D.J.C., 1983, Castellarium Anglicanum (London: Kraus) Vol. 2 p. 528
  Faull, M.L. and Moorhouse, S.A. (eds), 1981, West Yorkshire: an archaeological survey to A.D. 1500 Vol. 2 p. 561-2
  Illingworth, J.L., 1938 (republished 1970), Yorkshire's Ruined Castles (Wakefield)
  Armitage and Montgomerie, 1912, in Page, Wm (ed), VCH Yorkshire Vol. 2 p. 42
  Armitage, Ella, 1912, The Early Norman Castles of the British Isles (London: John Murray) p. 84 online copy
Periodical Articles
- Constable, Chris, 2007, 'Earthwork castles in West Yorkshire Part Two' Archaeology and Archives in West Yorkshire Vol. 24 p. 5-6 online copy
  Constable, Chris, 2006, 'Earthwork castles in West Yorkshire' Archaeology and Archives in West Yorkshire Vol. 23 p. 5-6 online copy
  Moorhouse, S.A., 1978, 'The Yorkshire archaeological register 1977' Yorkshire Archaeological Journal Vol. 50 p. 7-19
Antiquarian (Histories and accounts from late medieval and early modern writers)
- Chandler, John, 1993, John Leland's Itinerary: travels in Tudor England (Sutton Publishing) p. 531
  Toulmin-Smith, Lucy (ed), 1907, The itinerary of John Leland in or about the years 1535-1543 (London: Bell and Sons) Vol. 1 p. 42 online copy
Other sources: Theses; 'grey' literature; in-house reports; unpublished works; etc.
- Info from Chris Constable, Historic Buildings Officer West Yorkshire Archaeology Advisory Service 11/03/06
  Constable, Christopher, 2003, Aspects of the archaeology of the castle in the north of England C 1066-1216 (Doctoral thesis, Durham University) Available at Durham E-Theses Online
  Creighton, O.H., 1998, Castles and Landscapes: An Archaeological Survey of Yorkshire and the East Midlands (PhD Thesis University of Leicester) p. 776 online copy
  Armitage, Yorks Archaeol Soc MS 521, p. 60 (Armitage consider it a motte)

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The bibliography owes much to various bibliographies produced by John Kenyon for the Council for British Archaeology, the Castle Studies Group and others.

Suggestions for finding online and/or hard copies of bibliographical sources can be seen at this link.
Minor archaeological investigations, such as watching brief reports, and some other 'grey' literature is most likely to be held by H.E.R.s but is often poorly referenced and is unlikely to be recorded here, or elsewhere, but some suggestions can be found here.

The possible site or monument is represented on maps as a point location. This is a guide only. It should be noted that OS grid references defines an area, not a point location. In practice this means the actual center of the site or monument may often, but not always, be to the North East of the point shown. Locations derived from OS grid references and from latitude longitiude may differ by a small distance.
Further information on mapping and location can be seen at this link.

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