Page:Medieval Military Architecture in England (volume 1).djvu/256

 236 MedicBval Military Architechtre. If the masonry of Berkeley Castle were to be removed, as at Kilpeck or Ewias Harold, its remains would show a mound of earth, and attached to three sides of it a platform, the whole en- circled with a ditch or scarp. It would, in fact, be a moated mound with an appended platform, of a character very common in England, in the Welsh Marches, and in Normandy, and would resemble such works as Tamworth and Towcester, the dates of which are given in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. The inference is, therefore, that Berkeley was the seat of an EngHsh lord, probably from the ninth century. Had the fortress been an original Norman work, it is scarcely probable that a shell would have been the form of keep selected, or that, having been so selected, its lower 22 feet would have been filled up with earth. Evidently the Norman builder, finding a moated mound of no great height, but of considerable breadth, built his shell round it, as at Pontefract, as a revetment wall, and upon this, when clear of the top of the mound, raised his cur- tain. At a lower level, along the scarp of the existing ditch, he, or his immediate successor, constructed the walls, which, then as now, contain the whole castle. All the main walls of the castle are either Norman, or rebuilt upon Norman foundations, or very nearly so. Probably the keep was built first and the court enclosed shortly afterwards. Much was done in the Decorated period. The inner wall of the hall, at least, was rebuilt, and it may have been enlarged. The porch was added, the chapel much altered, and the domestic buildings possibly gutted and recast. Henry VIL, when in possession, seems to have made some inconsiderable alterations, and others have been added since. Berkeley is a rare example of an estate which has descended in the male line from the reign of Stephen, and in the female line from the Norman Conquest. The first of the latter ancestry is entered as the Lord of Berkeley in Domesday ; the first of the former is also there entered, though as proprietor of other estates. Few, if any, of our oldest families can say with truth as much, but further than this the Berkeley tenure has been " per Baroniam," and from the Con- quest they have been barons of the realm, first by tenure, and when, in the reign of Henry III., tenure fell into disuse, then by writ; but by one right or the other they have ever sat in the great council of the nation. There is no reason to suppose that the Romans had any settle ment at Berkeley. Their camps and villas are frequent in the neighbourhood, which was traversed by Roman roads, but of their presence in Berkeley itself there is no other evidence than the fact that the two main streets of the town cross in its centre at a right angle, in the Roman manner. There is, however, evidence of a religious house at Berkeley in the eighth century. Tilhere, Bishop of Worcester, in 778, seems to have been previously Abbot of Beorclea, as was Etheldune, also his suc- cessor at Worcester in 915. Tanner thinks the family at Berclea, mentioned in the Acts of a synod at Cloveshoe in a.d. 824, may