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Beatrice, who survived him, two daughters, Joan and Idonia, the former eventually becoming his sole heiress. Joan was given in marriage by Richard I to his favourite and armour-bearer, Robert de Turnham, Junr. She is principally noted as the founder of the little priory of Grosmont, near Whitby.2 Robert de Turnham was the elder of the two sons of Robert de Turnham, of Thurnham Castle, Kent. Realising that, owing to the proximity of higher ground immediately north of Foss Castle and to the rapid advances then being made in siege artillery, the fortress was not capable of withstanding a determined attack, Turnham abandoned it c. 1197, and commenced the erection of a rectangular keep castle on the broadest part of a long narrow ridge some half-mile east of the old castle. Although inhabited for some 125 years, Foss never developed any works in masɔnry.

Description. The earthworks which mark the site of this old stronghold of the Fossards stand on the northern bank of the Sandsend or Barnby Beck, about 4 miles east-north-east of Whitby, and about 2 miles from the coast. It is, undoubtedly, one of the most beautifully situated of our North Riding castles. The Sandsend Beck rises on the dreary moorlands of Newton Mulgrave, and flowing in an easterly direction, at one point in the course of its career dashes through a narrow dingle or ravine, where picturesque rocks jut out like gargoyles, where ledges create beautiful water-falls, and where the beck fights its way seawards, 'mid moss-grown rocks and hanging precipices overhung by ancient trees. On the left-hand side of this ravine, at the edge of a wood, are the tree-grown earthworks of Foss Castle.

The motte, which is only about 13 feet in height, is circular, and measures some 120 feet in diameter on its summit, which is exactly 100 feet above the beck, which washes its southern base. It has, owing to mutilation about the beginning of the

fled abroad, and did not return until after the Earl's death in 1179. As Fossard would, when the event is said to have occurred, be only some 16 years of age, and the Earl's sister must have been about 40-her father died before 1130 the story is probably incorrect. Chroniclers were not above introducing a little fiction into their narratives to relieve the monotony. The castle of Mountferrant, which the chronicler says was destroyed by Henry II as a mark of his displeasure at this escapade, had, almost certainly, been destroyed some ten years previously.

1 Pedes Finium Ebor., vol. xciv, p. 1.

2 The foundation charter will be found in Dugdale, iii, p. 15. No remains of the priory now exist, but the Suppres sion papers show that the church was 60 feet in length by 24 feet in width, and contained 3 altars and 16 stalls. To the south of the church were the miniature cloisters, 36 feet square, with the various buildings ranged round them.

3 Arms-Gules, a lion passant in fess or between two mascles in pale argent. The Fossards bore the well

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known arms, Or, a bend sable."

last century, lost its banquette, which may, when complete, have increased the height of the motte ramparts to some 22 feet above the bottom of the ditch.1 It is surrounded by a ditch except for a distance of some 80 feet on the south, where the sides of the motte rest on the edge of a precipice dropping sheer some 80 feet towards the beck beneath. This ditch is continued on the side (south-east) next the bailey, and is carried right round the motte, widening on the north, where the counterscarp is enlarged into a long platform, which doubtless bore additional defences for the protection of this, the weakest part of the fortress.

The bailey is small compared with the motte, but its exact dimensions are difficult to ascertain, owing to the fact that the precipice and steep slopes by which it is protected on the south-west and south, and to some extent on the south-southeast, rendered a ditch unnecessary, the stockading being placed on the very verge of these formidable natural defences. It probably measured some 180 or 190 feet each way, and approximates to a horse-shoe in shape. From the base of the motte the ground on which the bailey was placed drops towards the beck, so that the enclosure was completely dominated by the defences on the summit of the motte. On the west the bailey was defended by a deep broad ditch, now much silted up in places, with scarp and counterscarp banks, which ditch, on the north-west, joins the main ditch running round the motte.3

GUISBOROUGH.

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At the time of the Survey, Robert, Earl of Mortain and of Cornwall, the greatest of the Cleveland tenants-in-capite, was the principal landowner in Guisborough, holding in that vill and in Middleton and Hutton Lowcross twenty-five carucates of land, and having in his demesne one plough, and ten villanes

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1 Dr. Young gives us some clue to this mutilation. He describes (p. 687) the motte as a "round camp," or "strength or circular fort," near "Foss Mill, about half a mile north-west from old Mulgrave Castle," and states that it is a "large mound of earth, about 120 feet diameter at top, 30 feet high on east side, and near 40 on the west, where the ground is lower "; that the top was crowned with a low parapet of earth, the descent on every side being very steep." He adds in a note, "the top was dug into some years ago to examine the materials, its original form

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is therefore a little altered." He gives us no results of this unscientific examination. Probably the mutilation was caused (see Pickhill) by some tradition as to hidden treasure.

2 In this Foss somewhat resembles the well-known earthworks of the Busli Castle at Bailey Hill, Bradfield (West Riding).

3 The bailey ditch is not shown on the 25 in. ordnance map.

D.B., fo. 300a, col. 1; 305a, col. 1 ; 320b, col. 1; 332b, col. 2; Recap., 380b, col. I.

with four ploughs. There was a church, priest, and mill.1 The Earl subinfeuded the greater portion of his Yorkshire estates to his two great feudatories, Richard de Surdeval, of Skelton Castle, and Nigel Fossard, who, as we have just seen, had a fortress near Whitby. But Guisborough was one of the manors he retained in his own hands; he was one of the greatest of our Norman castle builders, and it is by no means improbable that he founded a stronghold at this place soon after the Conquest. If so, the only three castles existing in Cleveland at the time of the Survey were in his hands or in those of his feudatories. If a castle ever existed at Guisborough, certainly not the faintest trace of the earthworks which usually mark the site of a Norman stronghold are now to be found, or indeed appear to have been visible for many centuries.3 If, on the very scanty evidence we possess, we come to the conclusion that the Earl did construct a fortress here, it would probably be destroyed when he rebelled in 1088, and when Rufus confiscated his Yorkshire property.

HELMSLEY. (Fig. 2.)

History. The rectangular and concentric earthworks on which, c. 1200, Robert de Roos, or "Fursan," erected a stone castle, are certainly not of the type usually associated with a Norman stronghold, and the theory that they form part of a pre-Conquest fortification, possibly of Roman date, has been advanced by more than one authority.

The erection of Helmsley Castle is always assigned to Robert de Roos, probably on the authority of Dugdale1 and Camden5 ; but this would only appear to be one of several instances known to the writer where the honour of actually founding a certain castle is given, by monastic chroniclers, to the man who first substituted masonry for timbering.

1 D.B., fo. 305b, col. 1.

Dallaway, in his Discourse upon Architecture in England, p. 272, mentions a castle as having existed here.

3 Ord, in his History of Cleveland, p. 338, note-a work to which, unfortunately, little importance can be attached says the structure stood in "the large field close to the lane going from Church Street to Redcar, called Wars' Field. Part of the moat may still be distinguished in this and the adjoining field, with elevated ridges and uneven

surfaces, occupying several acres of ground." These earthworks, which are well-known to the present writer, have certainly never had anything to do with a Norman castle; they may, perhaps, represent the one-time existence of enclosures, outbuildings, and a pond attached to the Priory Home Farm.

Dugdale's Mon. Angl., v, 280. Camden says, alluding to Ryedale, "in this vale is Elmsley where Robert de Ross, surnamed Fursan, built a castle."

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