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SHREWSBURY-SKIPSEA

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had only a wooden keep. The present tower on the motte is the work of Telford.

The bailey of Shrewsbury Castle is roughly semilunar and covers nearly an acre. The walls stand on banks, which shows that the first wall was of timber. The Norman entrance arch seems to render it probable that it was in Henry II.'s reign that stone walls were first substituted for a wooden stockade, and the Pipe Rolls contain several entries of sums spent by Henry on this castle.1 But the first mention of stone in connection with the castle is in the reign of Henry III. In the reign of Edward I., a jarola or wooden wall, which had been raised above the outer ditch in the time of the Barons' War, was replaced by a stone wall. This perhaps refers to the second bailey, now destroyed, which lay to the south of the castle. In the time of Charles I. the castle still had a wooden palisade on the counterscarp of the ditch. The two large drum towers on the walls, and the building between them, now converted into a modern house, belong to a much later period than the walls. The area of the present castle, including the motte, is of an acre. 48

The value of the town of Shrewsbury had risen since the Conquest.

SKIPSEA, Yorks (Fig. 31).—There is no mention of this castle in Domesday Book, but the chronicle of Meaux Abbey tells us that it was built by Drogo de

1 Pipe Rolls, 11 Henry II., p. 89; 12 Henry II., p. 59; 14 Henry II., p. 93; 15 Henry II., p. 108; 20 Henry II., p. 108.

2 Payment to those who dig stone for the castle of Shrewsbury, Close Rolls, i., 622b. This is in 1224. There is also a payment of 50%. for works

at the castle in 1223. Ibid., 533b.

3 Hundred Rolls, ii., 80. A jarola or garuillum is a stockade; apparently derived from a Gallic word for oak, and may thus correspond to an oak paling. See Ducange.

4 Owen and Blakeway's History of Shrewsbury, i., 450.

Bevrère in the reign of William I. This chronicle is not indeed contemporary, but its most recent editor regards it as based on some much earlier document. It was the key of the great manor of Holderness, which the Conqueror had given to Drogo, but which Drogo forfeited by murdering his wife, probably on this very site. The situation of Skipsea is remarkable, but the original plan of Kenilworth Castle presented a close parallel to it. The motte, which is 46 feet high, and

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of an acre in space on top, is separated from the bailey by a level space, which was formerly the Mere of Skipsea, mentioned in documents of the 13th century, which reckon the take of eels in this mere as a source of revenue. The motte thus formed an island in the mere, but as an additional defence-perhaps when the mere began to get shallow-it was surrounded by a bank and ditch of its own. No masonry is to be seen on the motte now, except a portion of a wing wall going down it. It is connected with its bailey on the other side of the mere by a causeway which still exists. This bailey is of very unusual size, covering 8 acres; its banks still retain the name of the Baile Welts, and one of the entrances is called the Baile Gate. Skipsea Brough, which no doubt represents the former burgus of Skipsea, is outside this enclosure, and has no defences of its own remaining. A mandate of Henry III. in 1221, ordered the complete destruction of this castle, and it was no doubt after this that the earls of Albemarle, who had succeeded to Drogo's estates, removed their caput baronia to Burstwick.

1 Chronicon de Melsa, R. S. See Preface, p. lxxii.

Yorks Inquisitions (Yorks Rec. Ser.), i., 83.

3 Rot. Lit. Claus., i., 474b.

• Poulson's History of Holderness, i., 457.

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The value of the manor of Cleeton, in which Skipsea lies, had fallen at Domesday.'

says

STAFFORD (Fig. 32).--The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle that Ethelfleda of Mercia built the burh of Stafford ; and consequently we find that both in King Edward and King William's time Stafford was a burgus, or fortified town. Florence of Worcester, who is considered to have used a superior copy of the Chronicle as the foundation of his work, says that Ethelfleda built an arx on the north bank of the Sowe in 914. Arx, in our earlier chronicles, is often only a bombastic expression for a walled town, as, for example, when Ethelwerd says that Ethelfleda's body was buried in St Peter's porch in the arx of Gloucester. But the statement led many later writers, such as Camden, to imagine that Ethelfleda built a tower in the town of Stafford; and these imaginings have created such a tangled skein of mistake that we must bespeak our readers' patience while we attempt to unravel it.

Domesday Book only mentions Stafford Castle under the manor of Chebsey, a possession of Henry de Ferrers. Its words are: "To this manor belonged the land of Stafford, in which the king commanded a castle to be built, which is now destroyed." Ordericus also says

that the king placed a castle at Stafford, on his return from his third visit to the north, in 1070. Now the language of Domesday appears to us to say very plainly that in the manorial rearrangement which followed the Conquest some land was taken out of the manor of Chebsey, which lies immediately to the south of the

1 D. B., i., 323b.

2 Ethelwerd, anno 910.

3 "Ipse Henricus tenet Cebbeseio. Ad hoc manerium pertinuit terra de Stadford, in qua rex precepit fieri castellum, quod modo est destructum." D. B., i., 249a.

4"Apud Estafort alteram [munitionem] locavit." Ord. Vit., p. 199.

borough of Stafford, to furnish a site for a royal castle.1 It is exactly in this position that we now find a large oblong motte, similar to the other mottes of the Conquest, and having the usual bailey attached to it. It lies about a mile and a half south-west of the town, near the main road leading into Shropshire.

The position was an important one, as the castles of Staffordshire formed a second line of defence against the North Welsh, as well as a check to the great palatinate earls of Shropshire. The motte itself stood on high ground, commanding a view of twenty or thirty miles round, and both Tutbury and Caus castles could be seen from it. Between it and the town lies a stretch of flat ground which has evidently been a swamp formerly, and which explains the distance of the castle from the town; while the fact that it lies to the south of the Sowe shows that it has no connection with Ethelfleda's work. There is no dispute that this motte was the site of the later baronial castle of Stafford, the castle besieged and taken in the Civil War; the point we have to prove is that it was also the castle of Domesday Book.3

1 It should be said that Mr Eyton interprets the passage differently, and takes it to mean that the castle was built on land in the borough of Stafford belonging to the manor of Chebsey. But he himself says that "the site of Stafford Castle, within the liberties, though not within the borough of Stafford, would suggest a royal foundation"; and he believes this castle (the one on the motte) to have been the one garrisoned by Henry I. and made a residence by Henry II. Domesday Studies, p. 21.

2 Salt. Arch. Soc. Trans., vol. viii., "The Manor of Castre or Stafford," by Mr Mazzinghi, a paper abounding in valuable information, to which the present writer is greatly indebted.

3 In the addenda to Mr Eyton's Domesday of Staffordshire (p. 135) the learned editor says there are two Stafford castles mentioned in Domesday, in two different hundreds. We have carefully searched through the whole Stafford account, and except at Burton and Tutbury, there is no other castle mentioned in Staffordshire but this one at Chebsey.

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