Once Duke William was crowned as King of England following the Battle of Hastings, it took several years before the Normans could claim true domination of the country beyond the readily subservient south of England. Throughout the north and marshes of East Anglia, rebellious Saxons made it clear that they wanted nothing to do with these upstart French speaking incomers. As attempts to pacify those who objected to this change of status failed miserably, King William, the Norman, had to resort to violence, instigating what became known as ‘the Harrying of the North’, when vast areas of Northern England were laid to waste, with the people either murdered or driven off the land they and their forebears had farmed for generations. What became known as the Peak District although being comparatively uninhabited, didn’t escape the takeover, and to put his stamp on the region, King William divided the land amongst those knights who had served him well in battle. With William Peverel taking most of the land to the north and east of the Peak as his hunting preserve, the rest, mainly those lands to the east of what became Staffordshire and north Derbyshire were handed over to de Ferrier in order to expand his hunting estates further south in Leicestershire. While we may be used to imagining castles as impregnable fortresses built of stone, many began life as manmade hillocks protected not by stone but with rapidly thrown up timber palisades, a kind of quick-build system. Generally they fitted a standard design with the strongest part being incorporated within, or on top of the high mound, or motte where the lord and his knights sheltered, and a lower much larger area or bailey protecting everything necessary for everyday living. Here would be a noisy collection of everything from a...
