The fire spread from one hut
to another with sufficient speed to drive out the defenders, who in the
confusion which followed were slaughtered by the enemy.
This occurred in the momentous year 1066, when Harold, having defeated
the Norsemen and slain Haralld Hadrada at Stamford Bridge, had to hurry
southwards to meet William the Norman at Hastings. It is not
surprising, therefore, that the compilers of the Conqueror's survey
should have failed to record the existence of the blackened embers of
what had once been a town. But such a site as the castle hill could not
long remain idle in the stormy days of the Norman Kings, and William le
Gros, Earl of Albemarle and Lord of Holderness, recognising the natural
defensibility of the rock, built the massive walls which have withstood
so many assaults, and even now form the most prominent feature of
Scarborough.
Until 1923 there was no knowledge of there having been any Roman
occupation of the promontory upon which the castle stands. Excavations
made in that year have shown that a massively-built watch tower was
maintained there during the last phase of Roman control in Britain.
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