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BISHOP'S STORTFORD

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told that his engines kept up a most destructive fire of stones.1

The value of the manor of Berkhampstead had considerably decreased, even since the Count of Mortain received it.2

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BISHOP'S STORTFORD, Herts (Fig. 9).-Waytemore Castle is the name given to the large oval motte at this place, which is evidently the site of the castle of Estorteford," given by William the Conqueror to Maurice, Bishop of London. The manor of Stortford had been bought from King William by Maurice's predecessor, William, who had been one of the Norman favourites of Edward the Confessor. He may have built this castle, but he cannot have built it till after the Conquest, as the land did not belong to his see till then.

"The castle consists of a large oval motte, 250 x 200 feet at its base, rising 40 feet above the marshes of the river Stort, and crowned by a keep with walls of flint rubble, 12 feet thick. On the S. of the motte there are traces of a pentagonal bailey, covering 2 acres. It is enclosed on four sides by the narrow streams which intersect the marshes. The dry ditch on the fifth side, facing the motte, is discernible. The castle abuts on the road called The Causeway, which crosses the valley; it is in a good position to command both road and river." 5 The value of the manor had gone down at

Domesday."

BOURN, Lincolnshire (Fig. 10).-The manor of Bourn

1 Roger of Wendover, 1216.

2 D. B., i., 163.

3 The charter, which is in both Anglo-Saxon and Latin, is given in Dugdale's History of St Paul's, 304.

4 See Freeman, ii., 356; and D. B., i., 134a.

From report by Mr D. H. Montgomerie.

6 Waytemore has sometimes been identified with the puzzling Wiggingamere, but in defiance of phonology.

or Brune appears to have been much split up amongst various owners at the time of Domesday. A Breton named Oger held the demesne.1 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.

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"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."5

The value of Bourn had risen at Domesday.

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

2 M. A., vi., 86.

4 Associated Archæological Societies, VI., ix. 6 Report by Mr D. H. Montgomerie.

3 Itin., i., 27.

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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

1 Ipse Willielmus tenet Wasingetune. Guerd Comes tenuit T. R. E. Tunc se defendebat pro 59 hidis. Modo non dat geldum. In una ex his hidis sedet castellum Brembre. D. B., i., 28a, I.

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