SIMPLE ARTIFICIAL ENCLOSURES

(a) The Romano-British Period, 54 B.C.-A.D. 410

The earthworks under consideration are those which, rectangular or otherwise, were constructed during the historic period commencing with the Roman subjugation of Great Britain, and ending a few years before the Norman Conquest. It may be termed the Romano-British-Saxon Period. It was the incipient era of castellation proper in the British Isles, distinct from pure earthworks, inasmuch as during the Roman period massive defences of masonry supplanted the earlier uncemented walls and wooden palisading.

At the first invasion of Caesar, 55 B.C., we read of no towns being assaulted, but in the next, 54 B.C., the great oppidum of Cassivelaunus was taken by storm after the passage of the Thames. This capital, Verulamium (adjacent to the modern St. Albans), was a large oval enclosure defended upon three sides by a deep fosse and vallum, in one place doubled, and upon the other by an impassable marsh. The city was attacked in two places and captured. In A.D. 43 the final subjugation of England took place, and the vallum at Verulamium was crowned by the Romans with a massive wall of masonry, great portions of which still remain, supplanting the former wooden obstructions.

That which occurred at Verulamium happened also in numerous other places, Silchester for example, the Romans thus adapting an efficient earthwork to suit their own requirements. Where, however, pre-existing works did not occur, the walls, ramparts, and fosses were invariably constructed round a rectangular area such as may be seen at Chester. The enclosed streets crossed each other at right angles, and this feature is a marked one in Verulamium, although, as stated, the defences do not conform to the rectangular shape. Isolated earthworks constructed during the Roman Period are always more or less square.

Melandra is a Roman earthwork in a good state of preservation near Glossop in Derbyshire. It is almost square, and consists of a simple vallum and external fosse. There are four openings caused by two main roads which intersected at the centre of the earthwork. It affords an example of the prevailing structure of Roman Camps, which are numerous in those parts of the British Isles which owned the sway of the conquerors. The many camps, for example, upon the Watling Street all exhibit the same general plan, based upon the formation of the Roman legion.

Richborough Castle, near Sandwich in Kent, may be cited as a veritable example of a Roman castle built in Britain, and is almost the only one remaining at the present day that preserves in any marked degree its original salient points. It is conjectured to have been erected in the time of the Emperor Severus, its mission being to protect the southern mouth of the great waterway which then separated the island of Thanet from the mainland, a similar office being performed by Reculvers at the northern entry. Three sides of the rectangle are still protected by the massive masonry walls which the Romans knew so well how to build; the fourth, or eastern side, where flowed the river Stour, possesses no visible defence, as it has been undermined and overthrown by the river-current. The northern boundary is 440 feet long, and the western 460. The walls, which vary in height from 12 to 30 feet, are about 12 feet thick and batter towards the top; they are beautifully faced with squared stone in horizontal courses similar to those seen at Segontium, the Roman station at Carnarvon; the core is composed of boulders from the neighbouring beach, embedded in mortar with courses of the usual Roman bonding tiles. In the centre of the area stood a temple and other buildings; the foundations of some of these are still in evidence. Whether the external walls were strengthened by the addition of square or circular towers of masonry, as at Porchester and Silchester, has not as yet been definitely determined.

A common device in Roman castrametation was the berm or platform outside the surrounding wall, but immediately beneath it; in an attack upon the fortifications the assailants would be exposed to a plunging fire of missiles from the ramparts while descending the steep counterscarp of the ditch, to a raking discharge when ascending the slope of the scarp, and be entirely devoid of cover when crossing the berm, which was generally about 20 feet wide. Another advantage of the berm was that it placed the engines of the besiegers on the remote side of the ditch at a greater distance from the walls, and thereby lessened the effect of the missiles discharged from them. To still further modify the results of the latter upon the wall it was customary to bank up the earth upon the inner face to form a ramp, and this also lessened the effects of the rams of the besiegers. These features are shown in the foregoing diagrammatic section of the walls of Verulamium.

(b) The Saxon Period, c. 410-1066

Concerning the defensive works erected in the British Isles during the Saxon Period there is more indefiniteness prevailing at the time of writing than there is with regard to any period antecedent or consequent to it. This may be attributed to two causes, the first being the unsatisfactory use of the word burh in Anglo-Saxon manuscripts, and the second the effects produced during the past half-century by writers wrongly attributing the remains of early Norman castellation to the period preceding it, following upon a misunderstanding of the word above mentioned. This has had the result of rendering the major portion of the works produced upon the subject of castellation during the latter half of the nineteenth century unreliable and obsolete so far as the Saxon and Roman periods are concerned, while at the same time producing a marked hesitancy among experts to definitely attribute any work to the first of the periods without systematic excavation of the site.

In O.E. the word burh in its nominative form signifies a fort or stronghold and is generally translated as "borough," while in its dative form byrig it is commonly used to indicate what its modern representative "bury" conveys. But Anglo-Saxon writers did not use the two words strictly, and thus hesitancy and confusion have been produced. It is now being generally accepted that the usual form of burh or borough was that of a rectangular enclosure surrounded by a rampart and an external ditch, the area being of any dimensions up to 20 or 30 acres or more. This arrangement is probably exemplified in the earthworks at Wallingford.

It is obvious that the inherent weakness in this very elementary system of defence lies in the inability to adequately man all the ramparts at once because of their great extent; the defenders probably relied upon the promptness with which they could meet a threatened attack at any particular point. The Anglo-Saxons at a very early period recognised the advisability of forming fortified positions in the island, and carried out the system so entirely that practically every isolated house, farm, or group of buildings was enclosed by its rampart and ditch. Even at the present day we become aware of this fact from the scores of "burys" and "boroughs" with which the surface of our land abounds. The burh was thus a comparatively slight affair when compared with earthworks which had preceded it.

But undoubtedly the great centres of defensive strength lay in those towns which the Romans had formerly fortified, and the inclusion of their masonry walls in the borough boundary immensely augmented their efficiency, as is exemplified at York, Lincoln, and Chester. Around villages and farmsteads the defences probably consisted of a ditch, a vallum surmounted by a turf wall, a palisading of thick stakes, or even a hedge. That the latter was a mode of defence in the earlier part of the Saxon Period is proved by an insertion in the Old English Chronicle under the year 547—where Ida of Northumbria is said to have built Bebban burh, i.e. Bamborough,—that it was first enclosed with a hedge, and subsequently with a stone wall. Illuminations in Saxon MSS. representing fortified towns invariably depict stone walls with battlements; but, again, it may be that these are Roman, and crenellated walls are extremely ancient, being represented upon the Nineveh marbles. In the illustration from the Caedmon MS. given here true battlements are depicted by the Saxon artist, while a similar attempt has also been made in Harl. MS. 603—a battlemented parapet being evidently intended.

Ida "wrought a burh" at Taunton (before 721), and Alfred built many burhs against the Danes. His son, Edward the Elder, and Ethelfleda, the Lady of the Mercians, were yet more energetic in raising these defences. To Edward the burh at Witham, now unfortunately in process of demolition, and also that at Maldon are attributed, while Ethelfleda was responsible for those at Stafford and Tamworth in 913, and at Warwick in 914. In the absence of rebutting evidence we are undoubtedly justified in assuming that these burhs were simply replicas of the conjectured method of fortification pursued by the Saxons; the belief is strengthened by the remains at Maldon and Witham, where wide rectangular enclosures are found surrounded by earthen ramparts and external fosses.

A difficulty, however, arises when we consider the two burhs erected at Nottingham. No rectangular enclosures have been discovered there, and it seems probable that the word simply signifies that two forts were erected to protect the bridge which passed over the Trent at this point, similar perhaps to the mounds of earth at Bakewell and Towcester, which are supposed to date from the same period.

The genius of the Saxons appears to have been adapted to field warfare rather than to the construction or maintenance of strong military stations, for we find that when defeated they took refuge in natural fastnesses rather than in fortresses; the woods and marshes of Somerset, for example, protected Alfred from the pursuit by the Danes, and the last stand of these people against the Normans occurred in the fens and marshes about Ely. There is no account extant of a protracted resistance afforded by a Saxon fortress; that of London against the Danes may be attributed to the massive Roman walls there.

It is unsatisfactory to be compelled to wander thus in the realms of conjecture, but it is probable that the kinds of defence varied in different places, since at Worcester Edward surrounded an ancient borough with a wall of stone. An oblique light, however, is thrown upon the subject by the presence in England of a few undoubted examples of fortifications erected at definite dates by another northern race, i.e. the Danes, who might be expected to fortify themselves somewhat similarly to the Saxons.

These marauders built burhs at Reading, Quatford on the Severn, and Benfleet, but by far the best now remaining are those at Willington and Tempsford on the river Ouse. At Willington the Danes proposed to establish their winter quarters in 921, and an extensive burh was thrown up for the purpose. It consisted of a large enclosure with inner and outer wards, high ramparts, and three wide ditches filled with water from the river. The most striking features, perhaps, were the two large harbours within the fortifications, designed to protect the Danish galleys. The Saxon king Edward, however, carried the place by assault and burnt the fleet. The discomfited Danes, much lessened in numbers, retreated up the river, and near the junction of the Ivel with the main stream threw up a smaller burh which now bears the name of Gannock's Castle, near Tempsford. The fort is an oblong area enclosed within a single fosse, and, what is very significant in face of later developments, a mound of earth stands within it near a corner, where the only entrance to the fort is found. Probably this mound was protected by palisades the same as the rampart, but Edward, flushed by his former success, stormed the burh and captured it with terrible loss to the routed garrison.

Pevensey.—Pevensey Castle is associated with the earliest history of Britain. Upon its site stood the Roman Camp of Anderida, oval in shape, and obviously adapted to surface configuration. It is the reputed site of the landing of Caesar. The British occupied it when the Romans left, and here occurred the great massacre by the South Saxons under Ella in 477. In 1066 William I. landed at Pevensey and erected one of his portable wooden castles, probably within the Roman Camp. The Castle came to his half-brother Robert, Earl of Mortaign, who considerably strengthened the existing remains. The supposition that he erected a Motte and Bailey castle seems to be negatived by recent investigations. The Castle was held by Bishop Odo against the forces of Rufus for six weeks in 1088, but was surrendered, Odo promising to give up Rochester, which promise he subsequently violated. King Stephen besieged it in person in the war with the Empress Maud, when it was defended by Gilbert, Earl of Clare, and only surrendered through famine. It came to the Crown during the thirteenth century, and John of Gaunt appointed the Pelham family to be castellans. In 1399, Sir John of that name, an adherent of Bolingbroke, was absent when the Castle was besieged by the king's forces, but his wife, the Lady Jane, conducted an historical defence with such gallantry that the assailants retired. Pevensey appears to have been used as a State prison, and within it many notable persons have been incarcerated, including Edward Duke of York, James I. of Scotland, and Joan of Navarre, second queen of Henry IV.

A large proportion of the Roman wall surrounding the oval site is still in excellent preservation; it is strengthened by fifteen drum towers of great solidity. The height ranges between 20 and 30 feet, and upon the summits may still be perceived some of the strengthening Norman masonry. The inner castle is a remarkable feature of the enclosure; it is supposed to have been erected at the end of the thirteenth century, and one of the towers dates from the time of Edward II. It forms an irregular pentagon, each angle being strengthened by a massive drum tower; two semicircular towers flank the entrance, of which one only remains in good condition. The masonry of the drawbridge is still to be seen, and the entrance passage with portcullis grooves and meurtriÈre openings are in good condition. The great Roman wall has been utilised to form portions of the eastern and southern sides, but this suffered in the time of Elizabeth, when a part of it was blown up by gunpowder.