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QUATFORD-RAYLEIGH

191

The value of the manor of Preston Capes had risen from 6s. to 40s. at the time of the Survey. It was held by Nigel of the Count of Mellent.1

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QUATFORD, Shropshire (Fig. 26).-There can hardly be any doubt that the nova domus at Quatford mentioned in the Survey was the new castle built by Roger de Montgomeri, Earl of Shrewsbury. We have already suggested that the burgus which also existed. there may have been his work, and not that of the Danes. The manor belonged to the church before the Conquest. The oval motte, which still remains, is described as placed on a bold rocky promontory jutting into the Severn; it is not quite 30 feet high, and about 60 feet by 120 in diameter on top, and has a small bean-shaped bailey of 1 acre. It is near the church, which has Norman remains. Robert Belesme, son of Earl Roger, removed the castle to Bridgenorth, and so the Quatford castle is heard of no more. The manor of Quatford was paying nothing at the date of the Survey.

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Rayleigh, Essex (Fig. 27).-" In this manor Sweyn has made his castle." Sweyn was the son of Robert Fitz-Wymarc, a half English, half Norman favourite of Edward the Confessor. Robert was Sheriff of Essex under Edward and William, and Sweyn appears to have succeeded his father in this office. Sweyn built his castle on land which had not belonged to his father, so Rayleigh cannot be the "Robert's Castle" of the Anglo

1 D. B., i., 224.

? See Chapter IV.

3 Domesday Book says: "Ipse comes (Roger) tenet Ardinton. Sancta Milburga tenuit T. R. E. Ibi molinum et nova domus et burgus Quatford dictus, nil reddentes." I., 254.

4 G. T. Clark, in Arch. Cambrensis, 1874, p. 264.

5 Ord. Vit., iv., 32.

6 "In hoc manerio fecit Suenus suum castellum." D. B., ii., 33b. 7 Freeman, N. C., ii., 329, and iv., Appendix H.

Saxon Chronicle, to which some some of the Norman adventurers fled on the triumph of Earl Godwin.' There is a fine motte at Rayleigh, and a semicircular bailey attached; the ditch round the whole is still well marked. There is not a vestige of masonry on the surface, but some excavations made in 1910 revealed stone foundations. The inner bailey covers of an acre. The value of the manor had risen since the Conquest, but it was only a small one, with no villages in its soke.

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RICHARD'S CASTLE, Herefordshire (Fig. 27).-There can be little doubt that this is the castle referred to in Domesday Book under the name of Avreton, as it is not far from Overton, on the northern border of Hereford. Richard's Castle is almost certainly the castle of Richard, son of Scrob, one of the Normans to whom Edward the Confessor had granted large estates, and who probably fortified himself on this site. At the time of the Survey Richard was dead, and the castle was held by his son Osbern, and it is noted that he pays 10s., but the castle is worth 20s. to him. Its value was the same as in King Edward's time, a fact worth noting, as it coincides with the assumption that this was a pre-Conquest castle. There is a high and steep motte at Richard's Castle, and a small half-moon shaped bailey. There are remains of a stone wing wall running down the motte, and on the top there is a straight piece of masonry which must be part of a tower keep. The area of the inner bailey is of an acre. Avreton was

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1 Mr Round has suggested that this castle was at Canfield in Essex, where there is a motte and bailey.

2 "Isdem Osbernus habet 23 homines in castello Avreton et reddit 10 solidos. Valet ei castellum hoc 20 solidos." D. B., i., 186b.

3 Mr Clark's plan is strangely incorrect, as he altogether omits the bailey. Compare the plan in Mr Round's Castles of the Conquest, Archæologia, vol. lviii., and Mr Montgomerie's plan here, Fig. 27.

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not the centre of a soke, but appears to have lain in the manor of Ludeford.

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RICHMOND, Yorks (Fig. 28).-As in the case of Pontefract, this other great Yorkshire castle is not mentioned by name in Domesday Book, nor is there any allusion to it except a casual mention in the Recapitulation that Earl Alan has 199 manors in his castelry, and that besides the castelry he has 43 manors. The castle must have been built at the date of the Survey, which was completed only a year before William I.'s death; for during William's lifetime Earl Alan, the first holder of the fief, gave the chapel in the castle of Richmond to the abbey of St Mary at York, which he had founded. The name, of course, is French, and it seems impossible now to discover what English manor-name it has displaced.* It is certainly a case in which the Norman castle was not placed in the seat of the former Saxon proprietor, but in the site which seemed most defensible to the Norman lord. The lands of Earl Alan in the wapentake of Gilling had belonged to the Saxon Earl Edwin, and thus cannot have fallen to Alan's share before Edwin's death in 1071. The Genealogia published by Dodsworth (from an MS. compiled in the reign of Edward III.), says that Earl Alan first built Richmond Castle near his chief manor of Gilling, to defend his people against the attacks of

1 "Comes Alanus habet in sua castellata 199 maneria. castellariam habet 43 maneria." D. B., i., 381a, 2.

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This is stated in a charter of Henry II., which carefully recapitulates the gifts of the different benefactors to St Mary's. Mon. Ang., iii., 548. It is curious that the charter of William II., the first part of which is an inspeximus of a charter of William I., does not mention this chapel in the castle.

3 Mr Skaife, the editor of the Yorkshire Domesday, thinks that it was at Hinderlag, but gives no reasons. Hinderlag, at the time of the Survey, was in the hands of an under-tenant. Yorks. Arch. Journ., lii., 527, 530.

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