It is situated on the eastern bank of the Ecker River, a south-eastern tributary of the Oker that forms the state border with Lower Saxony to the west.

The castle stood above a narrow section of the valley, where a footbridge crossed the Ecker, on a spur with steep granite crags.

A Saxon noble Alardus of Burgdorf is mentioned as a witness, when in 1218 Emperor Otto IV made his will at nearby Harzburg Castle.

Alardus' ancestors had been vested with estates around the former Werla Kaiserpfalz in the 12th century and probably erected the castle where the Ecker River formed the border of the County of Wernigerode with the Principality of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel.

Like the Werla Kaiserpfalz, it then still was an immediate allod of the emperor, and the lords of the castle were responsible for protecting the game law in the surrounding Imperial forest.