Castle Hill

Castle Hill has been settled for at least 4,000 years. Experts regard it as one of Yorkshire's most important early Iron Age hill forts . The summit of Castle Hill is by far the most conspicuous landmark in Huddersfield. The Hill has been a place of recreation for hundreds of years and the easily discernible remains of past occupation have made it a subject for legend, speculation and scientific study. It can be located on UK Maps grid reference SE152140. The first people to set eyes on Castle Hill were probably hunters and gatherers of the Mesolithic age, camping amongst the forests which at that time covered the land. In the Neolithic and Bronze Age, there appears to have been widespread travel or trade along the river valleys connecting the Yorkshire Wolds, the Peak District and the Mersey and Ribble estuaries. This is shown by various characteristic types of stone and bronze tools in a place far from their points of origin. The hillfort was constructed in the early Iron Age, around 555BC taking up the whole hilltop. Modifications were made around AD43 to improve the defences, probably in response to the new threat from the Roman Empire.

The banks and ditches that remain are not those left by the Iron Age people. They are much more the result of recutting and other alterations carried out during the Middle Ages, and then modified by centuries of erosion. After the Norman Conquest of 1066, Almondbury became part of the territory known as the Honour of Pontefract, which was held by the de Laci family. It was they who established a small Castle on the hill. The castle is mentioned in a charter of King Stephen to Henry de Laci of about 1142 to 1154, and archaeological excavation has provided a wooden stake, radiocarbon-dated to the late 1140s, and a coin of about 1160. It can be assumed that the castle was complete and occupied by the 1140s.

In the early 14th century there was an attempt to found a town on the hill. It was laid out in the lower bailey, and possibly elsewhere on the hill. Aerial photography revealed a central roadway flanked by regularly laid-out plots. The town was probably abandoned by the 1340s, although memory of it may have lingered, since the map of Almondbury drawn up in 1634 marks the hill as the site of a town. After the end of the Middle Ages, Castle Hill remained uninhabited until the early 19th century. Its prominent position made it an ideal site for a warning beacon, as part of a network of such beacons on other prominent hills all over the country, spreading out in lines from the coast.

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