Aslockton Castle is a ruined fortification, a

motte-and-bailey castle A motte-and-bailey castle is a European fortification with a wooden or stone keep situated on a raised area of ground called a motte, accompanied by a walled courtyard, or bailey, surrounded by a protective ditch and palisade. Relatively easy ...

, in the village of

Aslockton Aslockton is an English village and civil parish east of Nottingham and east of Bingham, on the north bank of the River Smite opposite Whatton-in-the-Vale. The parish is also adjacent to Scarrington, Thoroton and Orston and within the Ru ...

Nottinghamshire Nottinghamshire (; abbreviated ''Notts.'') is a ceremonial county in the East Midlands of England. The county is bordered by South Yorkshire to the north-west, Lincolnshire to the east, Leicestershire to the south, and Derbyshire to the west. Th ...

. () The original name of the settlement was Aslachetone, which suggests a possible Norse origin; it was mentioned in the

Domesday Book Domesday Book ( ; the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book") is a manuscript record of the Great Survey of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 at the behest of William the Conqueror. The manuscript was originally known by ...

of 1086 where it was described as a large settlement. A motte-and-bailey fortress was built in the 12th century. Only the earthworks now remain. The precise date as to when the castle was built is unknown. However, it was most probably built in the 11th or the early 12th century. The ground plan of the castle is in the shape of a parallelogram, which houses two courts, one of which is square in form. The motte most probably had a wooden tower and a palisade. The castle had two rectangular baileys, an inner bailey and an outer bailey, with the smaller outer bailey used for livestock. The

moat A moat is a deep, broad ditch dug around a castle, fortification, building, or town, historically to provide it with a preliminary line of defence. Moats can be dry or filled with water. In some places, moats evolved into more extensive water d ...

of the castle would have been fed from the nearby stream. At some stage the fort went out of use and was replaced by a manorial site which later became Saucer Farm. The earth works surrounding the baileys were modified to form fishponds, fed by the stream that had filled the moat. Additional channels were dug and sluice gates controlled the water flow. Later, formal gardens were laid out around the ponds and the motte served as an elevated viewing platform. The motte, which today stands 16 feet high, is now called Cranmer's Mound or Cranmer's mount after

Thomas Cranmer Thomas Cranmer (2 July 1489 – 21 March 1556) was a theologian, leader of the English Reformation and Archbishop of Canterbury during the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI and, for a short time, Mary I. He is honoured as a Oxford Martyrs, martyr ...

, who was born here in 1489, and rose to become

Archbishop of Canterbury The archbishop of Canterbury is the senior bishop and a principal leader of the Church of England, the Primus inter pares, ceremonial head of the worldwide Anglican Communion and the bishop of the diocese of Canterbury. The first archbishop ...

. According to local accounts, he used to sit on the high mound during his early youth to listen to the tuneable bells of the nearby church of

Whatton-in-the-Vale Whatton-in-the-Vale is a village and civil parish in the Rushcliffe district, in the county of Nottinghamshire, England. It lies in the Vale of Belvoir, with the River Smite to the west and a subsidiary, the River Whipling to the east, mainly ...

. Previously the locals had named the mound Bailey Hills. To the south east two rectangular platforms enclosed by ditches are the sites of later houses of the Cranmer family. The site is a

scheduled monument In the United Kingdom, a scheduled monument is a nationally important archaeological site or historic building, given protection against unauthorised change. The various pieces of legislation that legally protect heritage assets from damage, visu ...

Notes

{{coord, 52.95403, N, 0.89402, W, region:GB_source:enwiki-osgb36(SK744402), display=title Castles in Nottinghamshire Scheduled monuments in Nottinghamshire