Beckington Castle (The Gatehouse Record)

Also known as, or recorded in historical documents as;
Ravenscroft School

In the civil parish of Beckington.
In the historic county of Somerset.
Modern Authority of Somerset.
1974 county of Somerset.
Medieval County of Somerset.

OS Map Grid Reference: ST79995150
Latitude 51.26230° Longitude -2.28803°

Beckington Castle has been described as a Masonry Castle but is rejected as such.

There are major building remains.

This is a Grade 2* listed building protected by law*.

Description

This is not a castle but a house which has been given a fanciful history stretching back to 1140 and a pageant of important owners including two of Henry VIII's wives. The builder was probably William Long, a wealthy Wiltshire clothier who died in 1558; and it was the home of the first two earls of Marlborough in the early seventeenth century. Not until 1839 was it called Castle House. All the rest of the nonsense stems from that silly piece of Victorian 'romanticism and pretence'. (Dunning 1995)

Sources of information, references and further reading

National Heritage List for England Listed Building number(s) 1296202
Historic England (PastScape) Defra or Monument number(s) 203129.
County Historic Environment Record (or Sites and Monuments Record) number(s) 24812; 11646.

Websites (Gatehouse is not responsible for the content of external websites.)
- Wikipedia entry
Books
- Dunning, Robert, 1995, Somerset Castles (Somerset Books) p. 71-2, 73
  Pevsner, Nikolaus, 1958, Buildings of England: North Somerset and Bristol (Harmondsworth) p. 142
Periodical Articles
- McGarvie, M., 1993 Sept, The Somerset Magazine p. 40-43
  1908 April 4, Country Life
Other sources: Theses; 'grey' literature; in-house reports; unpublished works; etc.
- Hollinrake, C. and Hollinrake, N. 1993, Beckington Castle, Beckington, Somerset - an archaeological evaluation Unpublished C and N Hollinrake report No: 35

Most of the sites or buildings recorded in this web site are NOT open to the public and permission to visit a site must always be sought from the landowner or tenant.
It is an offence to disturb a Scheduled Monument without consent. It is a destruction of everyone's heritage to remove archaeological evidence from ANY site without proper recording and reporting.
Don't use metal detectors on historic sites without authorisation.

The information on this web page may be derived from information compiled by and/or copyright of Historic England, County Historic Environment Records and other individuals and organisations. It may also contain information licensed under the Open Government Licence. All the sources given should be consulted to identify the original copyright holder and permission obtained from them before use of the information on this site for commercial purposes.
The author and compiler of Gatehouse does not receive any income from the site and funds it himself. The information within this site is provided freely for educational purposes only.

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.

Please help to make this as useful a resource as possible by contacting Gatehouse if you see errors, can add information or have suggestions for improvements in functality and design.
Help is acknowledged.

*The listed building may not be the actual medieval building, but a building on the site of, or incorporating fragments of, the described site.

Data >	PastScape	County HER		Listing	I. O. E.
Maps >	Streetmap	NLS maps	Where's the path	Old-Maps
Data/Maps >	Magic	V. O. B.	Geology	LiDAR	Open Domesday
Air Photos >	Bing Maps	Google Maps	Getmapping	ZoomEarth
Photos >	CastleFacts	Geograph	Flickr	Panoramio