EXTRACT FROM ENGLISH HERITAGE'S RECORD OF SCHEDULED MONUMENTS
The monument includes Clavering Castle, a ringwork with associated earthworks, situated 50m north of the church of St Mary and St Clement on the southern bank of the River Stort. The ringwork survives as a rectangular enclosure 150m east-west by 100m north-south which is surrounded by a ditch 26m wide and 5m deep. The ditch remains partly waterfilled, particularly to the north and west. The interior of the enclosure, which is at the same level as the surrounding ground level, is undulating, indicating the presence of buried structural remains. The original entrance to the enclosure crosses the ditch at the south-eastern corner at the location of a more recent trackway. Immediately north of the northern enclosure ditch is a retaining bank 10m wide and c.2m high, associated with a series of earthen banks, channels and pond bays which have not been dated but are thought to be associated with a former mill. These earthworks extend for 200m west of the castle, along the banks of the River Stort.

The site is identified as one of the castles to which the French party at Edward the Confessor's court fled in 1052. If so, Clavering Castle would be of pre-Conquest date. The footbridge on the north-west side of the monument is excluded from the scheduling but the ground beneath it is included.

ASSESSMENT OF IMPORTANCE
Ringworks are medieval fortifications built and occupied from the late Anglo-Saxon period to the later 12th century. They comprised a small defended area containing buildings which was surrounded or partly surrounded by a substantial ditch and a bank surmounted by a timber palisade or, rarely, a stone wall. Occasionally a more lightly defended embanked enclosure, the bailey, adjoined the ringwork. Ringworks acted as strongholds for military operations and in some cases as defended aristocratic or manorial settlements. They are rare nationally with only 200 recorded examples and less than 60 with baileys. As such, and as one of a limited number and very restricted range of Anglo-Saxon and Norman fortifications, ringworks are of particular significance to our understanding of the period.

Clavering Castle and associated earthworks are well preserved and may be pre-Norman in date. The earthworks and buried features within the interior of the monument will retain archaeological and environmental information relating to the development and internal layout of the castle, the economy of its inhabitants and the landscape in which they lived.