Situated on a rocky crag high above the Cheshire Plain, the shell of Beeston castle is one of the most dramatic and romantic ruins in the English landscape. Built by Ranulf, 6th earl of Chester, the 13th century castle incorporates the banks and ditches of an Iron Age hillfort. A great deal of new work was undertaken after Beeston passed to the Crown, but it is unlikely that the residential apartments were ever completed. What we see at Beeston today therefore represents the brooding hulk of a major medieval fortress shorn of its domestic buildings.
