Page:Medieval Military Architecture in England (volume 1).djvu/31

Post- Roman and English Earthworks. 15 ships, were the semicircular lines of ditch and bank found on capes and headlands and projecting cliffs on various parts of the sea-coast. Usually they are of limited area, as the invaders came commonly in very small bodies, but the Flamborough entrenchment has a line of bank and ditch three and a half miles long, of a most formidable character, and including a very large area.

Along the coast of South Wales are many small camps, probably of Danish origin, such as Sully, Porthkerry, Colhugh, Dunraven, Pennard, Penmaen, five others on the headland of Gower, and five or six along the southern shore of Pembrokeshire. Besides these material traces of the invaders, are a long list of such names as Haverford (fiord), Stackpole, Hubberton, Angle, Hubberston, Herbrandston, Gateholm, Stockholm, Skomer, Musselwick, Haroldston, Ramsey, Strumble, Swansea, savouring intensely of the Baltic. The Dinas' Head between Newport and Fishguard bays, though bearing a Welsh name, is fortified by an entrenchment due without doubt to the Northmen.

These and similar works evidently belong to the earlier period of the northern invasions, when the long black galleys of the vikings visited at not infrequent intervals the British and Irish shores, before they settled in either land. In the fifth and sixth centuries settlements began to be formed in Britain, and speedily assumed dimensions very formidable to the natives. The south-eastern coast of Britain, infested even in Roman times by the sea-rovers, and thence known as the Saxon shore, had been fortified by the Romans, but the works, intrinsically strong, were too weak in British hands to stem the progress of the foe. In A.D. 530, Cerdic and Cynric took the Isle of Wight, and slew many Britons at a place where Wightgar was afterwards buried, and where he probably threw up the work which bore his name, and afterwards, as now, was known as Carisbroke. In 547, Ida, the "flame-bearer" of the Welsh bards, founded Bebbanburgh, now Bamborough, and enclosed it first by a hedge [hegge], and afterwards by a wall ; and in 552 Cynric engaged the Britons at Sorbiodunum, afterwards Searo-burh, and now Old Sarum ; as did in 571 Cuthwulf or Cutha at Bedcanford or Bedford, in each of these two latter places, as at Carisbroke and probably at Twynham or Christchurch, throwing up the works which yet remain. The conquest of the Romano-British cities of Cirencester, Bath, and Gloucester, and the whole left bank of the Severn, from the Avon of Bristol to that of Worcester, was the immediate consequence of the victory of Deorham in 571, and was followed by the possession