Boston Castle

Boston Castle is a lodge that is now a house, believed to have been built around 1775 for Thomas, the 3rd Earl of Effingham. The building is constructed from deeply-coursed, squared rubble sandstone, and its roof is not visible. It is a small, square, two-storey structure with an addition on the north side. The corners feature large herringbone-tooled quoins. There is a door near the south corner with a quoined surround and a plain lintel. Each floor has a window with projecting sills, and the first-floor windows are taller and fitted with 20th-century casements in plain architraves. The building is topped with an embattled parapet that has ashlar copings. The lower two-storey addition to the north has a monoclinal roof with an embattled ridge. Thomas, the 3rd Earl of Effingham, resigned his commission when ordered to serve in the American War of Independence and spoke against the war in the House of Lords in 1775. The castle commemorates the Americans' first encounter with the British at Bunker's Hill near Boston in 1775, which resulted in a hollow victory for the British. A bicentenary booklet is available in the Rotherham Local Studies Library.