Castles in the Lune Valley
Castle Hill, Dolphinholme
Castle Hill, Dolphinholme is outside the Lune Valley and is included in this analysis for contrast ( see map ). It stands only some 1.5m high and up to 20m wide on a small plateau outside the village and strategically above the northwest banks of the River Wyre. No bailey has been identified here, but quarrying has obscured the western side of the monument. Remnants of the foundations of a structure survive on the top of the mound suggesting (assuming that it is contemporaneous and not the base of e.g. a quarryman's hut) that the motte cannot have been much higher in the past and thus was much smaller than the Lune Valley sites. This assumes, however, that the motte was not constructed around a stone tower as at Farnham and subsequently quarried away or that the mound was not cut away for the later construction of a tower that again has been quarried away.
