Page:Medieval Military Architecture in England (volume 1).djvu/87

 Castles at the Latter Part of the Twelfth Century, 71 and square keep of Bramber, on the Adur, rendered almost impregnable this seat of the turbulent and powerful Barons Braose of Gower, who also owned Knepp Castle, nearer the head of the river, where a mound and some Norman masonry- may still be seen. Knepp was afterwards held by King John on the attainder of William de Braose, and in 1216 was ordered to be destroyed. Arundel, the only castle named in " Domesday " as existing in the reign of the Confessor, and the seat successively of Earl Roger of Montgomery, of d'Albini, and the race of Fitz-Alan, still overlooks the dell of the Arun, and wears many of its older features ; and finally Chichester, also a Montgomery castle, long since de- stroyed, or reduced to its primal mound, stood within the fortified area of the Roman Regnum. Besides these there seem to have been Norman castles at Eastbourne and Firle, all traces of which have, however, disappeared. Mention is also made of Sedgewick Castle, near Horsham. More to the west in Hampshire, upon the Havant water, was Boseham, a very famous castle long since swept away ; and upon the inlet of Portsmouth, Porchester, a noble com- bination of Roman and Norman masonry. Within its area is contained a parish church and churchyard, and here was the favourite muster-place for troops destined for Havre. On the opposite side of the Solent, in the centre of the Isle of Wight, is Carisbroke, celebrated for its keep and mound, and its wells of unusual depth, and on the opposite mainland, at the marshy junction of the Stour and the Wiltshire Avon, stands the ancient keep of Christchurch, placed exception- ally upon the mound of the earlier Twynham. Here also is preserved the Castle Hall, a late Norman building, almost a duplicate of a corresponding structure in Fitzgerald's castle at Adare, near Limerick. Upon the verge of Southampton Water, between the Anton and the sea, occupying a strong peninsula, is the town of that name, still preserving the remains of its Norman walls, and of the keep of a very formidable castle once included within its area. Inland of this line of castles from the sea northwards to the Thames, the counties of Wilts and Berks showed with Hampshire an abundance of strong places. There, though actually in Hampshire, was Winchester, the British Caerwent and the Roman Venta Belgarum, which in its English days contested with London the supremacy of the South. Strongly fortified with broad and high earthworks and deep ditches, it contained, attached to one angle, the royal castle, and within another, its diagonal, the episcopal keep of Wolvesey, of which the one is now represented by its noble hall, and the