Page images
PDF
EPUB

BUCKINGHAM-CAERLEON

113

Taillebois; this is not inconsistent with the fact shown by Domesday Book, that the borough belonged to the king. That it was a motte-and-bailey castle is indicated by Speed's map of Buckingham in 1611; he speaks of the "high hill," though he only indicates it slightly in his plan, with a shield-shaped bailey. Brayley states that the present church is " proudly exalted on the summit of an artificial mount, anciently occupied by a castle."1

The castle hill occupies a strong position on the neck of land made by a bend of the river; it extends nearly half-way across it, and commands both town and river. The original earthworks of the castle were destroyed and levelled for the erection of a church in 1777, but the large oval hill remains, having a flat summit about 2 acres in extent, and about 30 feet above the town below. Its sides descend in steep scarps behind the houses on all sides but the north-east. There can be no doubt that the motte has been lowered, and thus enlarged, in order to build the church. The foundations of a stone castle were found in digging a cellar on the slope of the motte.2

The value of Buckingham had considerably risen at the date of Domesday.

CAERLEON, Monmouthshire (Fig. 11). — Domesday Book speaks of the castellaria of Caerleon. A castellaria appears to have meant a district in which the land

1 Beauties of England and Wales, Buckingham, p. 282. * Camden's Britannia, i., 315.

3 D. B., i., 143.

"Willielmus de Scohies tenet 8 carucatas terræ in castellaria de

Carliun, et Turstinus tenet de eo. Ibi habet in dominio unam carucam, et tres Walenses lege Walensi viventes, cum 3 carucis, et 2 bordarios cum dimidio carucæ, et reddunt 4 sextares mellis. Ibi 2 servi et una ancilla. Hæc terra wasta erat T. R. E., et quando Willelmus recepit. Modo valet 40 solidos." D. B., i., 185b, 1.

H

was held by the service of castle-guard in a neighbouring castle. The Survey goes on to say that this land was waste in the time of King Edward, and when William de Scohies, the Domesday tenant, received it; now it is worth 40s. Wasta, Mr Round has remarked, is one of the pitfalls of the Survey. Perhaps we shall not be far wrong if we say that in a general way it means that there was nobody there to pay geld. When this occurs in a town it may point to the devastations committed at the Conquest; but when it occurs in the country, and when it is accompanied by so clear a statement that the land which was wasta in King Edward's time and at the Conquest is now producing revenue, the inference would seem to be clear that the castle of Caerleon was built on uninhabited land. Caerleon, however, had been a great city in Roman times, and had kept up its importance at least till the days of Edgar, when it is twice mentioned in Welsh history.1 It must therefore have gone downhill very rapidly. Giraldus mentions among the ruins of Roman greatness which were to be seen in his day, a gigantic tower, and this is commonly supposed to have belonged to the castle. It certainly did not, for Giraldus is clearly speaking of a Roman tower, and the motte of the Norman castle not only has no signs of masonry, but has been thrown up over the ruins of a Roman villa which had been burnt.3 The motte and other remains of the castle are outside the Roman castrum, between it and the river. The

1 The Gwentian Chronicle, Cambrian Archæological Association, A.D. 962, 967. It is not absolutely impossible that these passages refer to Chester. Caerleon appears to have been seized by the Welsh very soon after the death of William I.

2 Itin. Camb., p. 55.

3 Loftus Brock, in Journ. Brit. Arch. Ass., xlix. J. E. Lee, in Arch. Camb., iv., 73.

[ocr errors][merged small][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][subsumed][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][graphic][merged small][merged small]
[blocks in formation]

bailey is roughly pentagonal, and covers 4 acres. The manor of Caerleon was waste T. R. E. and had

risen to 40s. T. R. W.1

CAMBRIDGE.-Ordericus tells us that William built this castle on his return from his first visit to Yorkshire in 1068, and Domesday Book states that twenty-seven houses were destroyed to make room for the castle." There can hardly be a clearer statement that the castle was entirely new. We have already seen that there is some probability that Cambridge was first fortified by the Danes; for though it has been assumed to be a Roman castrum, no Roman remains have ever been found there, and the names which suggest Roman occupation, Chesterton and Grantchester, are at some distance from Cambridge. The castle, according to Mr St John Hope's plan, was placed inside this enclosure, and the destruction of the houses to make room for it is thus explained. The motte and a portion of the bank of the bailey are all that now remain of the castle, but the valuable ancient maps republished by Mr Hope show that the motte had its own ditch, and that the bailey was rectangular. There was formerly a round tower on the motte, which, if it had the cross-loop-holes and machicolations represented in the print published in 1575, was certainly not of Norman date. The area of the bailey was 4 acres. The castle was a royal one, and like

1 D. B., i., 185b.

5

2 [Rex] "in reversione sua Lincolniæ, Huntendonæ et Grontebrugæ castra locavit." Ord. Vit., p. 189.

3 D. B., i., 189.

See

4 A similar plan was made independently by the late Professor Babington. Some traces of the original earthwork of the city are still to be seen. Mr Hope's paper on The Norman Origin of Cambridge Castle, Cambridge Antiquarian Soc., vol. xi. ; and Babington's Ancient Cambridgeshire, in the same society's Octavo Publications, No. iii., 1853.

5 W. H. St John Hope, as above, p. 342.

« PreviousContinue »