Earthwork 300m East of the Entrance to Swinton Castle

Site Details:

There is an earthwork, approximately 300m east of the entrance to Swinton castle. It is a small-elongated hill, with three terraces on either side of it. It sits along in the landscape as such a feature, and the terraces seem impracticable and redundant for crops in what is otherwise a flat landscape. Furthermore, it looks more like a garden feature, a work of art, but it is outside the castle grounds, and I have seen similarly carved hills elsewhere, far from stately grounds.

I've checked on maps going back to 1805, and it is clear Swinton Castle gardens never extended to this hill, and it is not marked as a feature of note. There does not seem to be any reference to it being recorded or investigated.

I have spotted a couple of similar hills in the area broadly to the west of here, and I will collect information on these to see if any of them have been investigated and understood.

I find these and several other similar earthworks beautiful, and I can't help but point to the similarity of these to the three tiered earthworks that run from Masham to East Witton. These also, I am struggling to explain in terms of either natural formations (moraine etc.) or utilitarian structures, such as crop terraces.