The castle's main purpose was to control movements across a tidal ford that once existed at this point on the original course of the river.

As the Anglo-Scottish magnate died childless, his sisters were obliged to cede some of his estates and properties to Henry III.

By 1327, the land around Shotwick was emparked as a royal deer park for Edward III who used the castle as a hunting lodge.

[7] In 1876 a local schoolmaster called Williams made a partial excavation of the castle site, finding glazed pottery, a spur and fragments of deer horns.

[5] A survey of the earthworks in the 1990s showed evidence that it had become a country house with ornamental gardens in the late medieval period.