Pickering Beacon Hill

To the West of Pickering castle stands a earth mound that was formed by cutting back the sides to make it more steeply sided. There is a bank and ditch around the top in a roughly oval shape but the ditch was partly filled in in the late 19th century. The earthworks were disturbed in the late 1930's by the building of an Observer Corps observation post and later again by more building works. It is suggested that a ringwork was built on the top to act as a siege castle, ringworks were often used as siege castles because of their ease of construction. The Anarchy is often sighted as a time of sieges and there may have been an unrecorded one during this time. There are records of repairs to Pickering castle in 1220 which imply that it may have been damaged in 1216/17 in a possible siege by prince Louis of France.