A most detailed paper by David Crook, Reprinted from Transactions of Thoroton Society of Nottinghamshire 1976, is well worth reading.

Mr Crook suggests that the threat from the Scots and a severe European famine in the early 1300s brought about the establishment of a ‘peel’, a further fenced area to the west of the Kings’ Houses adjoining the existing park. It survived only for a few years, after which the buildings were demolished and many being relocated nearer to the Kings’ Houses. The gatehouse of stone we assume to be Beeston Lodge.