or Brune appears to have been much split up amongst various owners at the time of Domesday. A Breton named Oger held the demesne. A charter of Picot, the Sheriff of Cambridgeshire, a person often mentioned in Domesday Book, gives the church of Brune and the chapel of the castle to the priory which he had founded near the castle of Cambridge-afterwards removed to Barnwell. Bourn was the centre of a large soke in Anglo-Saxon times. Leland mentions the “Grete Diches, and the Dungeon Hill of the ancient Castel, but very little of the remains is now visible, and the motte has been almost removed.

“The castle lies in flat ground, well watered by springs and streams. The motte was placed at the southern apex of a roughly oval bailey, from which it was separated by its own wet ditch, access being obtained through a gatehouse which stood on the narrow neck by which this innermost enclosure, at its N.W. end, joined the principal bailey, which, in its turn, was embraced on all sides but the S. by a second and concentric bailey, also defended by a wet ditch, which broadens out at the S.W. corner into St Peter's Pool. There is another enclosure beyond this which may be of later date. The inner bailey covers 3 acres. Very little is now left of the motte, but a plan made in 1861 showed it to be fairly perfect," and some slight remains of the gatehouse were excavated in that year. The castle is on the line of the Roman road from Peterborough to Sleaford, and close to the Roman CarDyke.""

The value of Bourn had risen at Domesday.

3 Itin., i., 27.

1 D. B., 1., 351b.

2 M. A., vi., 86. Associated Archæological Societies, VI., ix. 6 Report by Mr D. H. Montgomerie.

6

BRAMBER, Sussex (Fig. 10). — Of the manor of Washington, in which Bramber is situated, the Survey says that it formerly paid geld for fifty-nine hides; and in one of these hides sits the castle of Bramber. It must not be imagined that the castle occupied a whole hide, which according to the latest computations would average about 120 acres. It is evident that there had been some special arrangement between the King and William de Braose, the Norman tenant-in-chief, by which the whole geld of the manor had been remitted. The Domesday scribe waxes almost pathetic over the loss to the fisc of this valuable prey. “It used to be ad firmam for 100l," he says. The · manor of Washington belonged to Gurth, the brother of Harold, before the Conquest, but it is clear that Bramber was not the caput of the manor in Saxon times; nor was Washington the centre of a large soke. Bramber Castle was constructed to defend the estuary of the river, now known as the Adur, one of the waterways to Normandy already alluded to.

The castle occupies a natural hill which forms on the top a pear-shaped area of 3 acres. Towards the middle rises an artificial motte about 30 feet high ; there is no sign of a special ditch around it, except that the ground sinks slightly at its base. The bailey is surrounded by a very neatly built wall of pebbles and flints, laid herring-bone-wise in places, which does not stand on an earthen bank. The absence of this bank makes it likely, though of course not certain, that this wall was the original work of De Braose; the stones of which it is composed would be almost as easily obtained as the

earth for a bank. On the line of the wall, just east of the entrance, stands a tall fragment of an early Norman tower. The workmanship of this tower, which is also of flints laid herring-bone-wise, with quoins of ashlar, so strongly resembles that of the neighbouring church that it seems obvious that both were built at about the same time. The church is dedicated to St Nicholas, who was worshipped in Normandy as early as 1067;? it was probably the Normans who introduced his worship into England. Both church and tower are undoubtedly early Norman. The motte shows no sign of masonry.

The value of the manor of Washington had slightly risen since the Conquest.

Bristol.-Robert, Earl of Gloucester, the Empress Matilda's half-brother and great champion, is always credited with the building of Bristol Castle; but this is one of the many instances in which the man who first rebuilds a castle in stone receives the credit of being the original founder. For it is certain that there was a castle at Bristol long before the days of Earl Robert, as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle mentions it in 1088, when it was held by Geoffrey, Bishop of Coutances, and Robert Curthose against William II. ; and Symeon of Durham, in the same year, speaks of it as a "castrum fortissimum.” Bishop Geoffrey held Bristol at the date of

a