EARTHWORKS OF THE POST-ROMAN AND ENGLISH PERIODS.
But little is recorded of the internal condition of Britain between the
departure of the Legions, A.D. 411, and the arrival of the Northmen
in force thirty or forty years later; but whatever may have been the
effect of Roman dominion, or of the infusion of Roman blood, upon the
social or commercial character of the Britons, it is at least certain
that they had made little progress in the construction of places of
defence. The Romans dealt rather with the country than with the people.
The foreign trade under the Roman sway was no doubt considerable, and
much land was under cultivation, but the Britons seem to have acquired
but few of the Roman arts, and nothing of the Roman discipline.
Neither have their descendants, the Welsh, many customs which can
be traced distinctly to a Roman origin; and although there are many
words in their language which show its origin to be cognate with the
Latin, there are comparatively few which can, with any probability,
be shown to be derived from the Latin. How far against the Scots and
Picts they made use of Roman tactics or employed Roman weapons is but
little known. In defending themselves against the Northmen they, no
doubt, took advantage of the Roman walls at Richborough and Lymne, and
afterwards of Pevensey, but on the whole with only temporary success;
and from these they were driven back upon the earthworks of their
probably remote predecessors. There is not a shadow of evidence that
they constructed any new defensive works in masonry upon the Roman
models, or even repaired those that were left to them in the same
material.
There do, however, remain certain earthworks which seem to be laid
out according to Roman rules, but which contain no traces of Roman
habitations, are not connected with great Roman roads, and the banks
and ditches of which are of greater height and depth than those
generally in use among the Romans in Britain, and which therefore
there seems reason to attribute to the post-Roman Britons. Such are
Tamworth, Wareham, Wallingford, possibly Cardiff, though upon a
Roman road, and the additions to the Roman works at York. The name
Wallingford, “the ford of the Welsh,” may be quoted in support of
this view. It is difficult to understand how it is that there are no
remains in masonry which may be attributed to this period, for it is
impossible that with the example of the Romans before their eyes, and
a certain admixture of Roman blood in the veins of many of them, the
Britons should not have possessed something of the art of construction.
This difficulty does not occur in Gaul, whence the Romans were never
formally withdrawn. On the Continent indeed, generally, buildings are
found of all ages, from the Roman period downwards. Gregory of Tours,
in his “Historia Francorum,” written towards the end of the sixth
century, describes the fortified place of Merliar as of great extent
and strength, in which there were included a sweet-water lake, gardens,
and orchards; and M. de Caumont cites a description of an episcopal
castle on the Moselle in the same century, which was defended by thirty
towers, one of which contained a chapel, and was armed with a balista,
and within the place were cultivated lands and a water-mill; and there
were many such, like the defences of Carcassonne, of mixed Roman and
post-Roman work, that is, of work executed before and about the fifth
century.
In Britain, the course of events was different. The Northmen, men of
the sea, and accustomed to life in the open air, had no sympathies with
the Celts, and utterly disdained what remained of Roman civilisation;
slaying or driving out the people, and burning and destroying the
Roman buildings, which, in consequence, are in England fragmentary,
and in most cases only preserved by having been covered up with earth
or incorporated into later structures. The Roman works were mostly
on too large a scale for the wants of new settlers, and even where
these occupied the Roman towns they cared not to restore or complete
the walls, but buried what remained of them in high earthen banks,
upon which they pitched their palisades, and within which they threw
up their moated citadels. The Northmen respected nothing, adopted
nothing. Their earliest mission was one of violence and destruction.
They appear, in the south and east at least, in a large measure to have
slain and driven out the people of the land, and to have abolished such
institutions as they possessed. But not the less did they carry with
them the seeds of other institutions of a far more vigorous and very
healthful character. Whether Saxons, Angles, or Jutes, though landing
on the shores of Britain in quite independent parties, they had the
substance of their speech, their customs, and their gods in common.
They had the same familiarity with the sea, the same indisposition
to occupy Roman buildings, the same absence of all sympathy with the
native Britons. If they still held most of their lands in common, the
house and the homestead were already private property. Their family
ties were strong, as is shown in the nomenclature of their villages. As
they conquered, they settled, and practised agriculture, and as they
embraced Christianity they gradually established those divisions, civil
and ecclesiastical, sokes and rapes, tythings, hundreds, wapentakes,
and parishes, which still remain to attest the respect to which they
had attained for law and order, for the rights of private property, and
their capacity for self-government.
Much akin to, and before long to be incorporated into the English
nation, were the Norsemen from the seaboard country north of the Elbe,
the Danes of English history and of local tradition, who in the eighth
century played the part of the Saxons in the fifth. They scoured the
same seas, and harassed the Saxons as the Saxons had harassed the
Britons, only the invaders and the invaded being, generally, of the
same blood, finally coalesced, and the distinctions between them became
well-nigh effaced; still, for three centuries, the ninth, tenth, and
eleventh, the Danish name was the terror of the British Isles. They
infested every strand, anchored in every bay, ascended every river,
penetrated and laid waste the interior of the country.
Orkney is full of their traces, their language is the key to the
topographical nomenclature of Caithness, the gigantic works at
Flamborough Head are attributed to them; the great cutting, by which
they carried a branch of the Thames across Southwark, is on record. In
the year A.D. 1000, Ethelred found them forming much of the population
of Cumberland. Such terminations as _eye_, _ness_, _holm_, and _by_, so
common along the shores of England, or over the lands watered by the
Trent and the Humber, the Tees and the Tyne, and not unknown on the
western coast, show the extent and permanence of their settlements.
It does not, however, appear that the Danish earthworks differed
materially from those thrown up by the other northern nations in
England. Camps tending to the circular form and headlands fortified
by segmental lines of bank and ditch belong to all, and all when they
settled and acquired property underwent very similar changes in their
habits and modes of life.
No doubt, among the earlier works of the Northmen, those thrown up to
cover their landing and protect their ships, were the semicircular
lines of ditch and bank found on capes and headlands and projecting
cliffs on various parts of the sea-coast. Usually they are of limited
area, as the invaders came commonly in very small bodies, but the
Flamborough entrenchment has a line of bank and ditch three and a half
miles long, of a most formidable character, and including a very large
area.
Along the coast of South Wales are many small camps, probably of
Danish origin, such as Sully, Porthkerry, Colhugh, Dunraven, Pennard,
Penmaen, five others on the headland of Gower, and five or six along
the southern shore of Pembrokeshire. Besides these material traces
of the invaders, are a long list of such names as Haverford (fiord),
Stackpole, Hubberton, Angle, Hubberston, Herbrandston, Gateholm,
Stockholm, Skomer, Musselwick, Haroldston, Ramsey, Strumble, Swansea,
savouring intensely of the Baltic. The Dinas’ Head between Newport
and Fishguard bays, though bearing a Welsh name, is fortified by an
entrenchment due without doubt to the Northmen.
These and similar works evidently belong to the earlier period of the
northern invasions, when the long black galleys of the vikings visited
at not infrequent intervals the British and Irish shores, before they
settled in either land. In the fifth and sixth centuries settlements
began to be formed in Britain, and speedily assumed dimensions very
formidable to the natives. The south-eastern coast of Britain, infested
even in Roman times by the sea-rovers, and thence known as the Saxon
shore, had been fortified by the Romans, but the works, intrinsically
strong, were too weak in British hands to stem the progress of the foe.
In A.D. 530, Cerdic and Cynric took the Isle of Wight, and slew many
Britons at a place where Wightgar was afterwards buried, and where he
probably threw up the work which bore his name, and afterwards, as now,
was known as Carisbroke. In 547, Ida, the “flame-bearer” of the Welsh
bards, founded Bebbanburgh, now Bamborough, and enclosed it first by
a hedge [hegge], and afterwards by a wall; and in 552 Cynric engaged
the Britons at Sorbiodunum, afterwards Searo-burh, and now Old Sarum;
as did in 571 Cuthwulf or Cutha at Bedcanford or Bedford, in each of
these two latter places, as at Carisbroke and probably at Twynham or
Christchurch, throwing up the works which yet remain. The conquest of
the Romano-British cities of Cirencester, Bath, and Gloucester, and
the whole left bank of the Severn, from the Avon of Bristol to that
of Worcester, was the immediate consequence of the victory of Deorham
in 571, and was followed by the possession of Pengwern, afterwards
Shrewsbury, a most important post, and one by means of which the
Mercians, and after them the Normans, held the Middle March of Wales.
All along the line from Christchurch and Carisbroke, by Berkeley and
Gloucester, Worcester, Warwick and Shrewsbury, earthworks were then
thrown up, most of which are still to be seen.
With the social changes among the invaders changed also the character
of their military, or rather of their mixed military and domestic,
works. The British encampments, intended for the residence of a tribe
having all things in common, were, both in position and arrangements,
utterly unsuited to the new inhabitants. The Roman stations, intended
for garrisons, save where they formed part of an existing city, were
scarcely less so, nor were the earlier works of the Northmen suited
to their later wants. These were mostly of a hasty character, thrown
up to cover a landing or to hold at bay a superior force. No sooner
had the strangers gained a permanent footing in a district than their
operations assumed a different character. Their ideas were not, like
those of the Romans, of an imperial character; they laid out no great
lines of road, took at first no precautions for the general defence or
administration of the country. Self-government prevailed. Each family
held and gave name to its special allotment. This is the key to the
plan of the later and great majority of purely English earthworks. They
were not intended for the defence of a tribe or territory, nor for the
accommodation of fighting men, but for the centre and defence of a
private estate, for the accommodation of the lord and his household,
for the protection of his tenants generally, should they be attacked,
and for the safe housing, in time of war, of their flocks and herds.
These works, thrown up in England in the ninth and tenth centuries,
are seldom, if ever, rectangular, nor are they governed to any great
extent by the character of the ground. First was cast up a truncated
cone of earth, standing at its natural slope, from twelve to even
fifty or sixty feet in height. This “mound,” “motte,” or “burh,” the
“Mota” of our records, was formed from the contents of a broad and
deep circumscribing ditch. This ditch, proper to the mound, is now
sometimes wholly or partially filled up, but it seems always to have
been present, being in fact the parent of the mound. Berkhampstead is
a fine example of such a mound, with the original ditch. At Caerleon,
Tickhill, and Lincoln it has been in part filled up; at Cardiff it was
wholly so, but has recently been most carefully cleared out, and its
original depth and breadth are seen to have been very formidable.
Though usually artificial, these mounds are not always so. Durham,
Launceston, Montacute, Dunster, Restormel, Nant cribba, are natural
hills; Windsor, Tickhill, Lewes, Norwich, Ely, and the Devizes, are
partly so; at Sherborne and Hedingham the mound is a natural platform,
scarped by art; at Tutbury, Pontefract and Bramber, where the natural
platform was also large, it has been scarped, and a mound thrown up
upon it.
Connected with the mound is usually a base court or enclosure,
sometimes circular, more commonly oval or horseshoe-shaped, but if
of the age of the mound always more or less rounded. This enclosure
had also its bank and ditch on its outward faces, its rear resting on
the ditch of the mound, and the area was often further strengthened
by a bank along the crest of the scarp of the ditch. Now and then,
as at Old Sarum, there is an additional but slighter bank placed
outside the outer ditch, that is, upon the crest of the counterscarp.
This was evidently intended to carry a palisade, and to fulfil the
conditions of the covered-way along the crest of one of Vauban’s
counterscarps. Where the enclosure is circular, the mound is either
central, as at Pickering, or Mileham, or at Old Sarum, where it is
possibly an addition to an older work, such as Badbury, or it stands on
one side, as at Tutbury. Where the area is oblong or oval, the mound
may be placed near one end, as at Bramber. At Windsor and Arundel it
is on one side of an oblong enclosure, producing a sort of hourglass
constriction, and where this is the case a part of its ditch coincides
with the ditch of the place. Where the court is only part of a circle
it rests upon a part of the ditch of the mound. At Sarum there are
two ditches concentrically arranged. At Berkhampstead the mound is
outside the court. On the whole, as at Tickhill, Castle Acre, and
Lincoln, it is most usual to see the mound on the edge of the court,
so that it forms a part of the general “enceinte” of the place. Where
the base court is of moderate area, as at Builth and Kilpeck, its
platform is often slightly elevated by the addition of a part of the
contents of the ditch, which is rarely the case in British camps. At
Wigmore and Builth, where the mound stands on the edge of a natural
steep, the ditch is there discontinued. The base court is usually two
or three times the area of the mound, and sometimes, as at Wallingford
or Warwick, much more. No doubt the reason for placing the mound on
one side rather than in the centre of the court was to allow of the
concentration of the lodgings, stables, &c., on one spot, and to make
the mound form a part of the exterior defences of the place.
The mound and base court, though the principal parts, were not always
the whole work. Often there was on the outside of the court and applied
to it, as at Brinklow and Rockingham, a second enclosure, also with
its bank and ditch, frequently of larger area than the main court,
though not so strongly defended. It was intended to shelter the
flocks and herds of the tenants in case of an attack. At Norham, the
castle ditch was used for this purpose as late as the reign of Henry
VIII. There are several cases in which the mound is placed within a
rectangular enclosure, which has given rise to a notion that the whole
was Roman. Tamworth is such a case, and there, fortunately, the mound
is known historically to have been the work of Æthelflaed, as is that
of Leicester, similarly placed. From this and from the evidence of
the earthworks themselves a like conclusion may be drawn as to the
superadded mounds at Wareham, Wallingford, and Cardiff. At Helmsley, as
at Castle Acre, Brougham, and Brough, the earthworks stand upon part of
a Roman camp, and at Kilpeck and Moat Lane, near Llanidloes, part of
the area may possibly be British.
East Anglia contains some fine examples of these moated mounds,
combined with rectangular encampments. Castle Acre is an excellent
example, as are, in a less degree, Mileham and Buckenham.
When the English lord took up his abode within a Roman camp or station,
he often turned the Roman works, whether of earth or masonry, to
account, and threw up his bank in one corner, altering the contiguous
banks and ditches to suit his new arrangements. Thus at Pevensey,
Leicester, Cambridge, Lincoln, Southampton, Winchester, Chichester,
Caerleon, Chester, English mounds and base courts are placed within
Roman enclosures which either are or were walled. At Auldchester, near
Bicester, the Roman Alauna, is a mound of later date than the camp.
At Plessy, Tamworth, Wallingford, Wareham, Cardiff, are found mounds
decidedly of later date than the enclosing works. There are also cases
where the mound is placed within an earthwork with something of a
tendency to the rectangular, though scarcely to be pronounced either
Roman or Romano-British. Such are Clare, Hereford, Eaton-Socon, where
the mound is very small indeed; and Lilbourne. Tempsford is very
peculiar: it is a small rectangular enclosure close to the Ouse, and in
one corner, upon the bank, is a small mound.
The group of works, of which the mound was the principal feature,
constituted a Burh. The burh was always fortified, and each inhabitant
of the surrounding township was bound to aid in the repair of the
works, almost always of timber, a material which the Saxons, like other
German nations, appear usually to have preferred for building purposes
to stone, though some of their towns were walled, as Colchester and
Exeter, and Domesday records the custom of repairing the walls of
Oxford, Cambridge, and Chester.
In these English, as before them in the British works, the ditches were
sometimes used to contain and protect the approaches. This is well seen
at Clun and Kilpeck. At Tutbury the main approach enters between two
exterior platforms, and skirts the outer edge of the ditch, until it
reaches the inner entrance. The object was to place the approach under
the eyes and command of the garrison.
As there are still some archæologists whose experience entitles their
opinions to respect, who attribute these moated mounds to the Britons,
it will be necessary to point out that the attribution of them to the
English, though materially strengthened by the evidence of the works
themselves, does not wholly, or even mainly, rest upon it. While the
British camps are either præhistoric or unnoticed even in the earliest
histories, and the age of the Roman works is only deducible from their
plan and style, and from the known and limited period of the Roman stay
in Britain, English works are continually mentioned in the chronicles,
and the names of their founders and date of the construction of many
of them are on record. Thus Taunton was founded by Ine a little before
721-2, when Queen Æthelburh destroyed it. The original earthworks
still remaining are considerable, and formed part of the defences
of a fortress erected long afterwards. In the ninth century, as the
Danish incursions became more frequent, works of defence became more
general, and are largely mentioned directly, or by implication, in the
Anglo-Saxon chronicle. In 868-9, the Danish army was at Nottingham, a
strong natural position, in which it was besieged by the West-Saxons.
In 870, the Danes were a whole year at York and wintered at Thetford,
where large earthworks remain. In 875 they were at Cambridge, and in
876 at Wareham, a West-Saxon fortress, whence they attacked Exeter,
and at all these places are earthworks. In 878, we read that Ælfred
“wrought” a fortress at Æthelney, and in 885 the Danes laid siege to
Rochester and “wrought” another fortress about their position, no doubt
the great mound that still remains outside the castle and the Roman
area. In 893, the Danes ascended four miles along the Limen or “Lymne”
river in Kent, and there stormed a work, “geweorc,” which was but half
constructed. In the same year Hæsten entered the Thames and “wrought”
him a work at Milton, and other Danes landed at Appledore, at the mouth
of the Limen. In 894 Ælfred fought with the Danes at Farnham, where
the episcopal keep still stands upon a burh. Hæsten or Hastings had
already constructed a burh at Benfleet, which was stormed by Ælfred,
who in the same year blocked him up at Buttington, on the Severn. In
896, the Danes threw up a work on the Lea, twenty miles from London,
whereupon Ælfred threw up another work on each bank of that river lower
down, and diverted the waters through a number of shallow courses, thus
effectually shutting in the Danish ships. The Danes, in consequence,
marched inland, and crossed the country to Quatbridge, on the Severn,
and there “wrought a work” and passed the winter. Some of these works
remain, and are good examples of moated mounds.
In the tenth century the number of English fortresses was prodigiously
increased, chiefly by the energy of Æthelflaed. Ælfred died in 901,
and was succeeded by Eadward, his son, who attacked, in the fortress
of Badbury, his cousin Æthelwald, who held Christchurch and Wimborne.
In 907, Chester, the Roman walls of which had long lain in ruin,
was strengthened, probably by the earthworks still to be seen in
its south-western corner, though the mound has been almost entirely
removed. In 910, Æthelflaed, sister to Eadward and Lady of the
Mercians, comes upon the scene as the greatest founder of fortresses in
that century. In that year she built a burh at Bramsbury, and in 913
one at Scergeat or Sarrat, and at Bridgenorth (Oldbury). In 913, about
the 14th of April, Eadward built the north burh at Hertford, between
the rivers Memera or Maran, the Benefica or Bean, and the Lygea or
Lea, upon which long after stood the shell keep of the Norman castle;
and after May and before midsummer he encamped at Maldon while Witham
burh was being built. Then also the second burh of Hertford, south of
the Lea, was built. In the same year, 913, Æthelflaed and her Mercians
built the burh of Tamworth in the early summer, and in August that
of Stafford; and in the next year, 914, also in the summer, that of
Eddesbury, and towards the end of autumn, that of Warwick, on which are
still traces of a later keep.
In 915, Æthelflaed constructed a burh at Chirbury, probably in the
field still known as the King’s Orchard, and at Wardbury, and before
mid-winter that of Runcorn, where was afterwards a Norman castle.
In that year the Danes ascended the Bristol Channel and entered
Irchenfield, west of Hereford, remarkable, amongst many others, for
its burhs of Kilpeck and Ewias-Harold, whence they were driven back by
the men of Hereford and Gloucester, and of the surrounding burhs. In
916, Æthelflaed stormed the mound of Brecknock, and took thence the
Welsh king’s wife and thirty-four persons. Late in the year Eadward
was some weeks at Buckingham, and there constructed two burhs, one on
each bank of the river, on one of which afterwards stood Earl Giffard’s
keep. In 917, Æthelflaed took Derby, the gates of which town are
mentioned, and in 918 the burh of Leicester, soon after which she died
in her palace in Tamworth. In 919, Eadward went to Bedford, took its
burh, the site of Lord Beauchamp’s keep, and there remained for four
weeks, during which time he threw up a second burh on the opposite
or south bank of the river Ouse. In 920 he constructed the burh at
Maldon, and in 921, in April, that at Towcester, which in the autumn
he girdled with a wall of stone. In the following May he directed
the burh at Wigmore to be built, and in August the whole Danish army
spent a day before Towcester, but failed to take it by storm. In that
year the Danes abandoned their work at Huntingdon and wrought one at
Tempsford, and thence moved to Bedford, whence they were repulsed.
They also attacked the burh at Wigmore for a day, but without success.
This was a busy year. In it the English stormed Tempsford burh, and
beset Colchester burh, and slew there all but one man who escaped
over the wall. Maldon burh also was attacked by the Danish army, but
without success. In November, Eadward repaired the burhs at Huntingdon
and Colchester and raised that at Cledemutha. In 922, the same great
English leader, between May and midsummer, “wrought” a burh at Stamford
on the south bank of the Welland, opposite to that already existing.
He reduced the burh at Nottingham, repaired it, and garrisoned it with
Englishmen and Danes. In 923, Eadward erected a burh at Thelwall, and
in 924 one at Bakewell, and a second at Nottingham, opposite to the
existing one, the Trent flowing between them. In 943, Olaf the Dane
took Tamworth by storm. In 952, mention is made of the fastness of
Jedburgh, and of the town of Thetford. In 993, Bamborough was stormed.
[Illustration: TOWCESTER BURGH BURY MOUNT]
Of the fifty burhs named in the chronicle, about forty-one have been
identified, and of these about twenty-nine still exist. Of this number,
twenty-two are moated mounds, mostly with base courts also moated. At
Taunton, as at Chirbury, there is reason to suppose that there was a
mound, and the works at Exeter, Rochester, Colchester, and Pevensey,
which are Roman, possibly succeeding earlier British works, have been
taken possession of and altered by the English, as is the case also
at Chester, where was, and at Pevensey, where still is, a mound. At
Rochester is a large mound, though outside the fortress. Rougemont in
Exeter is itself a natural mound, and Bamborough, from its great height
and steepness, needed neither mound nor earthwork of any kind. Of
double burhs, commanding the passage of a river, the chronicle mentions
Nottingham and those on the Lea, and others at Hertford, Bedford,
Stamford, and Buckingham. Unfortunately, none of these are perfect.
At Nottingham and on the Lea both mounds have long been removed; one
is remembered at Stamford and Buckingham, and one may still be seen
at Hertford. But the only double mounds remaining to show how, in the
tenth century, the English defended the passage of a river, are those
at York, which are not mentioned in the chronicle.
It appears then, that setting aside works that have not been
identified, or which have been destroyed before note was taken of them,
there are above a score of burhs, the date of the erection of which,
and the name of the founder, are entered in a trustworthy record, and
which are still to be seen. What then is a burh? A burh is a moated
mound with a table top, and a base court, also moated, either appended
to one side of it, or within which it stands. But the burhs, the dates
of which are on record, and which are thus described, are but a very
few of those found all over England, in the lowlands of Scotland, and
on the marches bordering on Wales, which from their precise similarity
in character to those actually identified must be assumed to be of like
date and origin, and may therefore safely be attributed to the ninth
and tenth and possibly to the eighth centuries, and to the English
people, that is to the Northern settlers generally, as distinguished
from the Britons and the Romans.
It happens also that, in very many cases where these burhs are found,
they can be shown to have been the “caput” or centre of an estate.
It is probable that this was always the case, but as a rule it is
only with respect to the very large estates that this can be proved
from records. Thus the mound of Wallingford was the seat of Wigod,
whose heiress married Robert D’Oyley; Bourne or Brum was held by Earl
Morcar in 870; Edwin, Earl of Mercia, Lord of Strafford Wapentake, in
Yorkshire, had an “aula” at Laughton-en-le-Morthen, and Conyngsborough
was the centre of a royal fee. The English Lord of Richmondshire had
a seat at Gilling, the mound of which has not long been levelled. The
mound at Halton was the seat of Earl Tosti. At Berry Banks, near Stone,
dwelt Wulfer, Lord of Mercia. The chief seats of the English lords
of Hallamshire are not known, but in that district the latter thanes
were Waltheof, Tosti, Sweyn Lord of Sheffield, and Harold, whose seats
must be sought for in the mounds and banks of Castle Hill and Castle
Bailey, near Bradford; Castle Hill, at the meeting of the Sheaf and
Don; Tickhill, Wincobank, and Mexborough, all moated mounds; also in
Lancashire and Yorkshire are Melling and Hornby in Lonsdale, Castle
Hills at Black Bourton, Robin Hood’s butt at Clapham, and Sedbury
or Sedda’s burh, a well-known mound with oval courts, Castle-dykes
at Ledescal and Langwith, Maiden Castle at Grinton, and Kirkby
Malessant. The great mound at Clare in Suffolk was the fortified seat
of Earl Aluric, who held an enormous estate in that district. Eye,
in the same county of Suffolk, the seat of Earl Edric, has a fine
mound, as have Thetford and Haughley. The hill of Hedingham and that
of Norwich are natural, but the latter was raised artificially and
fortified with a ditch and horseshoe appendages, probably in the ninth
or tenth centuries. Dudley also was a great English residence, as was
Bennington mound in Hertfordshire. Hereford was fortified by the great
Harold, Ewyas by another Harold; Kilpeck and Richard’s Castle were also
early seats, as were the mounds of Clun, Oswestry, and Whittington, in
Shropshire. In Scotland upon the mound called the “Butte of Dunsinane,”
tradition places the residence of Macbeth early in the eleventh
century. The butte stands within an oval area defended, says Pennant,
by banks and ditches. Opposite Kingussie on the Spey is a very curious
natural mound, rising on three sides out of the marshes of the river,
and which is known to have been the residence of the celebrated Wolf
of Badenoch. There is also a moated mound with appended courts on the
banks of the Clyde.
[Illustration: LAUGHTON-EN-LE-MORTHEN]
The burhs are mentioned in the early laws of England, but by this time
the signification of the word had become extended, so that it was
frequently applied not only to a moated mound but to the town that had
sprung up around it. By the laws of Æthelstan, every burh was to be
repaired within fourteen days after the Rogation days, and money was
allowed to be coined at royal burhs. By the laws of Edmund the king’s
burh was a place of refuge, and under those of Æthelred, he who fought
in a king’s burh was liable to death. Burh-bryce was the violation
of a castle or dwelling. Burh-bote, a payment for keeping burhs or
fortresses in a state of defence, was a branch of the well-known
“trinoda necessitas.” Originally, the English burh was a fortified
house, the “Domus defensabilis” of Domesday, the “Aula,” the German
“Saal,” of the owner of the surrounding estate or manor, which the
tenants were bound to defend; of which the designation may sometimes be
Norman, but the thing designated is undoubtedly of far earlier origin.
The term burh naturally became extended to the cluster of surrounding
huts, and a hedge with a ditch was their primary enclosure, the repair
of which is provided for in very early Saxon laws. A good stout hedge,
even of quickset, is not to be despised, and the cactus and bamboo
hedges of India will turn a band of soldiers. The word “Haia” is not
infrequent in Domesday, and it there means an enclosure into which
wild beasts were driven, “Haia in qua capiebantur feratæ.” It was also
used for the enclosure of a park, as the Haye Park, at Knaresborough,
and the Hawe Park attached to Skipton Castle. King Ida’s hedge at
Bamborough was for the defence of annexed pasture lands, for the castle
scarce needed any such addition to its surpassing strength. The word
was also extensively used in Normandy, both for a defence and for an
enclosure. One of the old Herefordshire castles bears the name of Hay.
[Illustration: CASTLE HILL MEXBOROUGH]
The Edictum Pistense of Charles the Bald, in 864 (cap. i.), expressly
orders all “Castella et firmitates et haias,” made without his license,
to be destroyed, “disfactas,” because they were injurious to the
district. “Vicini et circummanentes exinde multas deprædationes et
impedimenta sustinent” (“Rerum Gallicarum Scriptores,” vii., 677).
Hedges therefore were not always mere enclosures, but sometimes a
military defence.
These mounds, where they have descended to us, and have undergone no
change at the hands of the Norman architect, are mere green hillocks,
clear indeed in their simplicity, though having lost by time the
sharpness of their profile, and more or less of their height and of
the depth of their ditches. No masonry has ever been observed upon
them which could by any possibility be attributed to their founders,
or which could be supposed to be part of their original design. It
is evident, however, that the earthwork was only the support of some
additional defence. On the mound was certainly a residence, and both
its crest and base, as well as the appended courts, must have been
encircled by some sort of barrier besides the earth-bank. We read that
Towcester was defended by a wall, which however was built very quickly,
and probably was like a field wall, without mortar. But with or without
mortar, no wall could have been placed upon a fresh heap of earth, and
that spoken of must have stood upon the natural ground at or around
the base of the mound. No doubt Exeter was walled by Æthelstan, and
Colchester had walls, partly, as we see, Roman, but partly no doubt,
English; and Derby had gates, though of what material is not stated.
At Corfe is some masonry, certainly older than the Conquest, and part
of its outer defences; but Corfe is a natural hill. It is well known
that the English were from a remote period conversant with masonry,
and constructed churches of stone or timber as suited them best; and
nothing is more natural than that they should have employed the former
where the object was to resist an attack. But upon a burh, or upon an
artificial earthwork of any height, masonry of any kind was obviously
out of the question. Timber, and timber alone, would have been the
proper material. Timber was always at hand, and it was a material of
which, possibly from their early maritime habits, the English were
very fond. Also the rapidity with which these burhs were constructed
shows that timber must have been largely employed. They were thrown up,
completed, attacked, burnt, and restored, all within a few months.
There are not wanting descriptions of these timber-defended works. M.
de Caumont cites a curious passage from Ernaldus Nigellus, an author of
the ninth century, who relates an expedition under Louis le Debonnaire
against the Breton king, Marman, whose strongholds were protected by
ditches and palisades.
“Est locus hinc silvis, hinc flumine cinctus amoeno.
Sepibus et sulcis atque palude situs.”
Intus opima domus....
This however was a Breton work, and there is no mention of a mound. Two
centuries later the mound was in general use, and another quotation,
taken also from M. de Caumont, from the life of John, a canonised
prelate of the church of Terouane, by Archdeacon Colmier, gives an
account of the fortress of Merchen, near Dixmude, in which the material
employed and the mode of construction are clearly set forth. The
original, taken from the “Acta Sanctorum,” is appended to this paper,
and is in truth a description of a moated mound, with its fence and
turrets of timber, its central dwelling, and the bridge across the
ditch rising to the top of the mound. The description is illustrated
by the representation of the taking of Dinan, in the Bayeux tapestry.
There is seen the conical mound surmounted by a timber building, which
two men with torches are attempting to set on fire, while others are
ascending by a steep bridge which spans the moat, and rises to a
gateway on the crest of the mound.
Many of these mounds under the name of motes (motæ) retained their
timber defences to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and that too
on the Shropshire and Welsh border, crowded with castles of masonry.
Ducange defines mota as “Collis, seu tumulus, cui inædificatum
est castellum. Olim castella numquam nisi in eminentissimis locis
extruebantur. In Flandria vero, humili ac planissima regione, congestis
undequaque terrarum molibus, fieri solebant motæ, quibus arces
imponerentur”; and adds that mota is the same work known in Dauphigny
as “poypia,” and in Auvergne as “mote seigneuriale.” From Lambertus
Ardensis he quotes: “Motam altissimam, sive dunjonem eminentem in
munitionis signum firmavit, et in aggerem coacervavit.” And Orderic
tells that, in 1098, Pain de Mont-Doubleau delivered up to William
Rufus, “Fortissimam, quam apud Balaonem possidebat, motam, per quam
totum oppidum adversariis subactum paruit.” And in 1119, Fulk of Anjou,
with 500 knights laid siege, “ad motam Galterii,” which the king had
fortified. Also near Ponte-Corvo was “Motam magnam, quam faciebat
facere Dominus Canis cum mulfossis et tajatis ad claudendum Paduanos,”
like the great mound at Rochester, just outside the city wall. In the
Roman de Rou:—
“Hubert de Rie est à sa porte
Entre le mostier et sa mote.”
“Mostier” being the church. Also in “La Bataille des Sept Arts”:—
“Qui fu fier cum chastel sur mote.”
Also the _Consuetudines Trecensis_ speak of “Le principal chastel ou
maison-fort, mote, ou place de maison seigneuriale”: and in _Colletus_,
“Il y a des masures qui ont des droits très considérables; nous avons
des simple poypes [ce sont des terres élevées et fossoyées] qui ont
les plus beaux droits.” The _History of Dauphigny_ has, in 1290, “Item
castrum seu Poypiam de Montlyopart; item castrum seu fortalicium de
Pusigniano.” Ducange is copious on this subject.
The use of the mound as the site of the “maison seigneuriale”
was general in England, and several such—as Barwick-in-Elmet and
Laughton-en-le-Morthen—are still pointed out as the seats of early
English nobles and kings; and of others thrown up primarily for
defence, as Tamworth and Leicester, and afterwards occupied as royal
and other residences, the date is on record.
After the Conquest, the English term “burh” seems to have given place
to the Latin “mota,” at least in public records. It is true that in
a charter by the Conqueror, given by Rymer, occurs “Et in burgis, et
muro-vallatis, et in castellis,” but “burgis” may be held to mean
borough towns. In the charter of Matilda, 1141, bestowing the earldom
of Hereford on Milo de Gloucester, she grants “Motam Hereford et
cum toto castello,” words which evidently refer to the mound, now
destroyed, and not, as has been supposed, to the right to hold a
moot there. Also, in the convention between Stephen and Henry of
Anjou the distinction is drawn between “Turris Londinensis et ‘Mota
de Windesora,’” London having a square keep or tower, and Windsor a
shell keep upon a mound. Probably when, as at Durham, keeps of masonry
superseded the “ligna tabulata firmissime compacta,” the fortress
ceased to be called a mote, and became a castle; but in very many
instances this change was a long time in coming about, and in many of
the less important and private residences it never occurred at all.
Thus, the moated mounds on the Upper Severn show no trace whatever
of masonry, and as late as the reign of Henry III., 159 years after
the Conquest, and years too of incessant battling with a warlike and
sleepless foe, timber was still the material of their defences. The
Close Roll of 9 Henry III., 30 May, 1225, thus addresses the Custos of
Montgomery:—
“Rex etc. dilecto et fideli suo Godescallo de Maghelins salutem.
Precipimus tibi quod ex parte nostra firmiter precipias omnibus
illis qui motas habent in valle de Muntgumery quod sine dilatione
motas suas bonis bretaschiis firmari faciant ad securitatem et
defensionem suam et parcium illarum.”[1] And not only in the
defences of these lesser motes and fortified private houses did
timber play an important part. Turrets of timber were prepared for
the castle of Montgomery, and even Shrewsbury itself, the seat
successively of three most powerful earls and the chief place
in their earldom, was by no means wholly a work in masonry. In
the reign of Edward I. the jurors appointed to report upon the
condition of the castle, state: “Quod unus magnus turris ligneus
qui edificatur in castro Salop corruit in terram tempore domini
Uriani de St. Petro tunc vice comitis et meremium ejusdem turris
tempore suo et temporibus aliorum vice comitum preterea existencium
ita consummatur et destruitur quod nichil de illo remansit in
magnum dampnum domini Regis et deterioracionem ejusdem castri.”
In a French charter of 1329 occurs, “Premierement le motte et les
fossez d’entour le motte de Maiex,” and in 1331, “Le motte de mon
Manoir de Caieux et les fossez entour.” It appears, then, that
from an early period, certainly from the ninth century, it was a
common practice in constructing a strong place, whether a private
dwelling or a military post, to place it upon the summit of a
mound, and to surround both the mound and an appended enclosure
with defences of earth, and that in many, probably for some time
in all, cases the building within and the defences around such
places were of timber, and indeed, so far as they stood on made
ground, necessarily so. Sometimes probably, when the front was
more extended, as when a small pasture ground attached to the main
fortress was to be protected from sudden assaults, recourse was had
to a “haia” or “clausura.”
In viewing one of these moated mounds we have only to imagine a central
timber house on the top of the mound, built of half trunks of trees
set upright between two waling pieces at the top and bottom, like the
old church at Greensted, with a close paling around it along the edge
of the table top, perhaps a second line at its base, and a third along
the outer edge of the ditch, and others not so strong upon the edges of
the outer courts, with bridges of planks across the ditches, and huts
of “wattle and dab” or of timber within the enclosures, and we shall
have a very fair idea of a fortified dwelling of a thane or franklin in
England, or of the corresponding classes in Normandy from the eighth or
ninth centuries down to the date of the Norman Conquest.
The existence of these mounds in distinct Welsh territory is very
curious and requires explanation. That this form of dwelling was in
common use among the Welsh is certainly not the case. Where moated
mounds occur in Wales it is usually on the border, or near the
sea-coast, or in or near the open valleys accessible to the English,
which the English or Northmen are known to have invaded in the eighth
and ninth centuries. The mound near Llanidloes is an exception, being
distinctly within the hills. But that of Tafolwern, from which the
Welsh princes dated several charters, is near the open valley. That
of Talybont, whence Llewelyn dated a letter to the Archbishop of
Canterbury in 1275, and which was afterwards visited by Edward the
First, is on a plain within easy reach of the sea. Hên Domen and Rhos
Diarbed on the Upper Severn are also good examples. Still, as the Welsh
princes intermarried and had frequent communication with the English,
they must have been familiar with a form of fortification very simple
and easy to construct, and yet very capable of being held against a
sudden attack. It must be observed, also, that the English hold upon
the Welsh border was of a very fluctuating description, and the
Welshmen must not only have been perfectly familiar with the English
method of construction, but from time to time have been actually
in possession of their strongholds. That the Welsh used timber for
defensive purposes appears from their law by which the vassals were to
attend at the lord’s castle for its repairs or for rebuilding, each
with his axe in his hand. In some cases in these Border works there
is scarcely any mound, at others the mound is low and hollow in the
centre. Caer Aeron and another small earthwork near Builth seem to have
been the earthen bases of a mere circular wigwam. Caer Aeron cannot
have been a mere temporary structure, as the circumscribing ditch has
been cut with considerable labour in the rock.
It is very evident, both from the existence of Offa’s dyke, and from
the immense number of these moated mounds thrown up along its course,
that the English had early and long possession of large tracts of the
border territory. Offa ruled over Mercia from A.D. 757 to 796, and
his dyke extends from the mouth of the Wye to that of the Dee. At its
northern part, for about forty miles, is a second work, known as Wat’s
Dyke, a little in its rear, and thought to be a somewhat earlier work,
also by Offa. Before the actual line of a work so galling to the spirit
of a turbulent people could have been decided upon there must have been
many years of contest along the border, and the English must have had
something like permanent possession of the land on either side, and
have held estates of which the mounds still existing were the “capita”
or chief seats. The dyke, it should be remembered, was rather a civil
boundary than a military defence.
It is further to be remarked that moated mounds corresponding precisely
in pattern to those in England, are very numerous in Normandy. In
size they vary within much the same limits. All have or had a proper
ditch, some, as Briquessart and Des Olivets, stand in the centre of
the court, some at one end, others on the edge. The court is sometimes
circular, most commonly oblong, very rarely indeed rectangular. The
outer enclosures have their ditches, which communicate with those of
the inner defences. M. de Caumont gives a list of fifty-four of these
mounds, within a radius of sixty miles from Caen, and since he wrote
many more have been observed. These also were, from an early period,
the seats of great landowners, and from very many of them came the
knights and barons who accompanied William to England, and there
settled in posts very similar. Sir F. Palgrave gives a list of 131 of
these fortified residences in the Cotentin, the Avranchin, and the
Bessin, which includes only six of those mentioned by de Caumont. A
large number of those earthworks seem never to have had, at any time,
defences of masonry. Others, upon the mounds, had Norman shell keeps.
Besides the British theory, these mounds have been claimed as
sepulchral. It is of course possible that such mounds as Arundel
or Marlborough may have been originally sepulchral, and therefore
older than their defensive additions. To few if any has the crucial
experiment of opening them been applied; but this is not a very
probable explanation, and could certainly not be applied to those
mounds as a class. Among many other reasons for taking this view, it
may be observed that sepulchral mounds are always artificial, whereas
moated mounds are often natural, and still more frequently partly
so. No one could suppose Hawarden, or Dunster, or Montacute, to be
sepulchres, and yet these are as much moated mounds as Arundel and
Tonbridge. Moreover, sepulchral mounds are not often placed where
a defensive work is obviously needed, and most rude nations are
superstitious, and would object to dwell upon or around a grave. The
Tynewald in Man, Cwichelmsley Knowe in Berkshire, and a work upon
the Clyde in Lanarkshire, are the only known sepulchral mounds which
have been employed for other purposes, and of these the two former
are judicial, not residential. The barrows round York, though smaller
than most burhs, are big enough to have carried residences, but do not
appear to have been so employed. Moreover, the common testimony of the
country has generally given to the moated mounds some name, such as
Castle Hill or Burh, indicative of their military origin.
It has been observed that moated mounds are usually near the parish
church. This might be expected, since the parish, like the manor, was
usually a private estate, and the church was originally provided by the
lord for the accommodation of his tenants and himself.
There is a class of mounds due probably to the same people with those
above described, but very seldom moated, and not usually accompanied by
base courts and enclosures. These are the moot-hills, used for civil
purposes, as the holding of courts-leet, of which the mound at Barton,
in Northamptonshire, is a fine example. They are not uncommon. There
is one near Kenilworth, close to Stoneleigh Church, one at Hawick,
one called the Mote Hill, in Hamilton Park; there is also one on the
right bank of the Neckar, below Heidelberg. Sometimes they are called
toot-hills; hence Tothill Fields, though the mound is gone.
In claiming for these moated mounds a northern and in Britain an
English origin it would be too much to assert that in no other class
of works is the mound employed, or by no other people than the
Northmen; but it may be safely laid down that in no other class of
early fortification does the mound occur as the leading and typical
feature. In Roman and Norman, and possibly in purely British works,
the mound may be occasionally seen, like the cavalier in the works of
Vauban, as at Kenilworth, or as an outwork, as at Caerphilly, or it
may be employed to cover or divide an entrance; but such mounds are of
irregular shape, mere detached and elevated parts of the general bank,
and not likely to be confounded with the moated mound described above.
APPENDIX.
Vita Sti Johannis Epis: Morinorum. Ob: 1130.
[_Acta Sanctorum_, Januarii 27.]
Contigit ut in villa, cui Morchem vocabulum est, hospitii mansionem
haberet [Johannes]. Erat autem secus atrium ecclesiae munitio
quaedam quam castrum vel municipium dicere possumus valde excelsa,
juxta morem terrae illius, a domino villae ipsius multis retro
annis extructa. Mos namque est ditioribus quibuscunque regionis
hujus hominibus et nobilioribus, eo quod maxime inimicitiis
vacare soleant exercendis et caedibus, ut ab hostibus eo modo
maneant tutiores, et potentia majore vel vincant pares, vel
premant inferiores, terrae aggerem quantae praevalent celsitudinis
congerere eique fossam quam late patentem, multamque profunditatis
altitudinem habentem circumfodere, et supremam ejusdem aggeris
crepidinem vallo ex lignis tabulatis firmissime confacto undique
vice muri circummunire, turribusque, secundum quod possibile
fuerit, per gyrum dispositis, intra vallum, domum vel, quae omnia
despiciat, arcem in medio aedificare, ita videlicet ut porta
introitus ipsius villae non nisi per pontem valeat adiri, qui ab
exteriori labro fossae primum exoriens est in processu paulatim
elevatus, columnisque binis et binis, vel etiam trinis altrinsecus
per congrua spatia suffixis innixus, eo ascendendi moderamine per
transversum fossae consurgit, ut supremam aggeris superficiem
coaequando oram extremi marginis ejus, et in ea parte limen prima
fronte contingat.
In hujus-modi ergo asylo Pontifex, cum suo frequenti et reverendo
comitatu hospitali, quum ingentem populi turbam tam in ecclesia,
quam in atrio ejus, manus impositione, et sacri Chrismatis unctione
confirmasset, ut vestimenta mutaret, eo quod coemiterium humandis
fidelium corporibus benedicere statuisset ad hospitium regressus
est, unde illo, ut propositum perficeret opus, iterum descendente,
et circa medium pontis, triginta quinque vel eo amplius pedum,
altitudinem habentis, certa de causa subsistente, populique non
modica caterva ante et retro, dextra lævaque circumstipante,
continuo antiqui machinante hostis invidia, pons ponderi cessit, et
dissipatus corruit, magnamque illorum hominum turbam cum episcopo
suo ad ima dejicit; fragore autem ingenti e vestigio consecuto,
transtris, trabibusque tabulatis, et ruderibus magno cum impetu
pariter et strepitu concidentibus: nebula quaedam tenebrosa ita
omnem illam ruinam repente circumfudit, ut quid ageretur vix
quisquam discernere potuerit.
TRANSLATION.
It chanced that in a town called Merchem, Bishop John had a
guest-house. There was also close to the court of the church a
strong place, which might be regarded as a castle or a municipium,
very lofty, built after the fashion of the country by the lord of
the town many years ago. For it was customary for the rich men
and nobles of those parts, because their chief occupation is the
carrying on of feuds and slaughters, in order that they may in this
way be safe from enemies, and may have the greater power for either
conquering their equals or keeping down their inferiors, to heap
up a mound of earth as high as they were able, and to dig round it
a broad, open, and deep ditch, and to girdle the whole upper edge
of the mound, instead of a wall, with a barrier of wooden planks,
stoutly fixed together with numerous turrets set round. Within was
constructed a house or rather citadel, commanding the whole, so
that the gate of entry could only be approached by a bridge, which
first springing from the counterscarp of the ditch, was gradually
raised as it advanced, supported by sets of piers, two, or even
three, trussed on each side over convenient spans, crossing the
ditch with a managed ascent so as to reach the upper level of the
mound, landing at its edge on a level at the threshold of the gate.
In this retreat the bishop with his numerous and reverend retinue,
after having confirmed a vast crowd of people both in the church
and its court, by laying on of hands and the unction of the sacred
chrism, returned to his lodging that he might change his vestments,
because he had resolved to consecrate a cemetery for the burial
of the bodies of believers. When, in again descending from his
lodging, in order to effect the proposed work, he halted for some
reason about the middle of the bridge, which had there a height of
thirty-five feet or more, the people pressing behind and before,
and on each side, straightway, the malice of the old enemy so
contriving, the bridge yielded to the weight and fell shattered;
and the crowd with the bishop fell to the bottom with a great crash
of joists, beams, and planks, with great force and noise, while a
thick dust at once enveloped the ruin so that scarce any one could
see what had happened.
• • • • •
The following is also curious:—
(Ludovicus Grossus, A.D. 1109.) “Puteolum regreditur antiquam
antecessorum suorum destitutam _Motam_ castro jactu lapidis
propinquam, occupat. Castrum fundibalariorum, balistariorum,
saggitariorum, emissa pericula sustinentes; etc.”