Page:Medieval Military Architecture in England (volume 1).djvu/418

 388 MeciicEval Military Architecture. In the highest and north-western quarter of the space thus enclosed is the burh, attributed by Norden, with great probabiUty, to Edward the Elder, after the suppression of the rebellion of ^Ethel- wald in 901. This is an oblong mound, wholly artificial, and com- posed of chalk-gravel. It measures about 160 feet north and south by 150 feet east and west, and has a table summit about 120 feet by 90 feet ; it is about 20 feet high. This mound and base court, with the circumscribing bank and ditch, and the watercourse, with, no doubt, a strong palisade, formed the original fortress, which, side by side with the Priory, afforded to the contiguous town tem- poral and spiritual protection. Here, upon the old site, Richard de Red vers, having before obtained a grant of the manor from Henry L, erected a castle such as was then in use. He walled in the area, placing probably his curtain along the crest of the bank and upon the edge of the mill leat. His keep he built upon the mound, and the hall and domestic buildings upon the line of the wall, along the edge of the water. He is said also to have walled the town. The masonry remaining is but scanty and confined to some fragments of the keep and the hall-house, both of which appear to be original. The keep is peculiar both in position and in its details. It is, or has been, rectangular, and it stands upon the summit of the mound. It is very unusual, for obvious reasons, to find rectangular keeps placed upon artificial earthworks. At Guildford, where this appears to be the case, it is only partially so, the tower being built on the slope of the mound so that at least one half of it descends to the solid. It is, no doubt, possible that here, the mound being of but moderate height, the foundations may be laid below it ; but more probably this is not the case, and the engineer trusted, and securely, to the immense breadth of his masonry to spread the weight and thus avoid unequal settlement. Usually, when keeps are erected on artificial mounds, they are of the shell type, as at Arundel. This keep is also peculiar in its details. It was a rectangular tower, 50 feet north and south by 46 feet east and west. Its walls were fully 1 1 feet thick. There are no traces of pilasters, and the angles are chamfered off, the face of the chamfer being about 6 feet. At present only the east and west sides are standing, to a height of nearly 30 feet, and it is difficult to make out from them what were the arrangements of the building. In the west wall is one opening ; on the east are two, fiat-sided, 8 feet wide, about 18 feet high, and descending to the ground-level. They are closed above by very fiat segmental arches — in fact, plat-bands — relieved by obtusely-pointed, if not round-headed, arches of construction in the work immediately above such details, so far as they can be seen or inferred. The low and large openings, the chamfered angles, and the absence of pilas- ters are utterly unlike what is usual in a Norman keep ; though, from the great mass and general figure of the building, it can scarcely be other than Norman. Mitford, in Northumberland, though differing in detail from the present tower, differs quite as much from the ordi-