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Clough Castle is an excellent example of an Anglo-Norman castle with an added stone tower. A small kidney-shaped bailey lies south of a large mound, originally separated from it by a 2.1m deep ditch. On top of the 25 ft high motte is a stone tower, enlarged to become a tower house in the 15th century. It is sited off-centre as much of the rest of the top of the motte was occupied by a large hall, which apparently burned down. Around the motte is a ditch, and on the south-east side a low crescent shaped bailey, which was probably once joined to the motte by a wooden bridge.
Excavations on the summit of the mound in 1950 revealed that originally (in the late 12th or early 13th century) the top of the motte was surrounded by a timber palisade within which were pits for archers. Also found was the foundation of a long rectangular hall in the north-east half of the area, probably built in the mid 13th century. Later in the same century a small rectangular stone keep was built to the south-west, two storeys high and surviving to this day, having been conserved in 1981-82. In the late Middle Ages, after what appears to have been a period of disuse, it was restored and added to, resulting in an L-shaped tower house.
References:The Pilgrimage Church of Wies (Wieskirche) is an oval rococo church, designed in the late 1740s by Dominikus Zimmermann. It is located in the foothills of the Alps in the municipality of Steingaden.
The sanctuary of Wies is a pilgrimage church extraordinarily well-preserved in the beautiful setting of an Alpine valley, and is a perfect masterpiece of Rococo art and creative genius, as well as an exceptional testimony to a civilization that has disappeared.
The hamlet of Wies, in 1738, is said to have been the setting of a miracle in which tears were seen on a simple wooden figure of Christ mounted on a column that was no longer venerated by the Premonstratensian monks of the Abbey. A wooden chapel constructed in the fields housed the miraculous statue for some time. However, pilgrims from Germany, Austria, Bohemia, and even Italy became so numerous that the Abbot of the Premonstratensians of Steingaden decided to construct a splendid sanctuary.