Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 5.djvu/587

 ii s.v. JUNE 22, 1912.1 NOTES AND QUERIES.

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it necessary to describe them by a word borrowed from the French ; indeed, such a name as " motte," or " motte-castle," begs the question. There may be seen, for instance, in the village of Mexborough, near Rotherham, adjoining the road leading to Doncaster, a moated hillock with a court attached. This earthwork is much too small for a town, and can only have been a place of defence, and perhaps a residence. The village is mentioned in Domesday as Mechesburg, and since it was for many centuries a very small village, there can hardly be a doubt that its name is derived from the earthwork. The earthwork is a burh, not a " motte-castle."

But examples like this do not accord with the Norman " motte " theory, and accordingly the author, after writing at some length on the meaning of burh, con- cludes (p. 19) that it " was the same thing which in mediaeval Latin was called burgus, that is a fortified town." She goes on thus :

" It would not have been necessary to spend so much time on the history of the word burh if this unfortunate word had not been made the subject of one of the strangest delusions which ever was imposed on the archaeological world. We refer, of course, to the theory of the late Mr. G. T. Clark, who contended in his ' Mediaeval Military Architecture ' that the moated mound of class (e) [i.e., the moated hillock with a court attached], which we have described in our first chapter, was what the Anglo-Saxons called a burh. In other words, he maintained that the burhs were Saxon castles. It is one of the most extraordinary and inexplicable things in the history of English archaeology that a man who was not in any sense an Anglo-Saxon scholar was allowed to affix an entirely new meaning to a very common Anglo-Saxon word, and that this meaning was at once accepted without question by historians who had made Anglo-Saxon history their special study. . . .Sentiment perhaps had something to do with Mr. Clark's remarkable success."

And then our author turns to an Anglo- Saxon charter of the ninth century, which, as she describes it, tells how a lady and her husband

" built the borough of Worcester. As they expressed it in their memorable charter, it was not only for the defence of the bishop and the churches of Worcester, but ' TO SHELTER ALL THE FOLK.' "

By way of emphasis, and to clinch the argu- ment, the last five words are printed in capitals. But what are the facts ? In Thorpe's translation the charter begins thus :

" To almighty God the true Unity and the holy Trinity in heaven, be praise and glory, and thanksgiving, for all the good which he has given us ; for whose love, in the first place,

aldorman and ^Ethelflaed, and for St. Peter's and the church at Worcester, and also for the prayer of their friend bishop Werferth, have commanded the ' burh ' at Worcester to be constructed as a protection to all the people, and also to raise the praise of God therein." ' Diplo- matarium,' pp. 1367.

This does not mean that -a burh set Weogernaceastre eallum ^jem folce to gebeorge, and eac frjeron Godes lof to arjerenne "). The burh was built to be ( 1 ) a refuge for the people in time of danger, and (2) a place of worship. In other words, it was to be a fortified church, the ecclesia incastellata of the documents, with a rampart. That many ancient churches were surrounded by defensive walls, and constructed to be used as fortresses in time of danger, is a well-known fact, and need not be discussed now. The castle of Wor- cester, says Leland (whom I quote at second hand),

" stood hard on the south part of the cathedrall church, almost on Severne. It is now cleane downe, and halfe the base courte or area of it is now iciihin the tcall of the close of the cathedrall church. The dungeon hille of the Castle is a great thinge, at this tyme overgrowen with brush- wood. The castle fell to mine soone after the Conquest, and half the ground of it was given to the augmenting the close of the Priorye."

The " dungeon hill," or castle mound, has been found to contain numerous British, Roman, and Anglo-Saxon remains.

There is at least one other instance in which a church with its surrounding wall is described as a burh. The church of St. Paul in London, the cathedral church, is described indifferently in charters as kirke, mynster, byrig, or biri ; about 958 it is called Paulesbiri ; in 970 it is described as " Paulusbyrig aet Lundsenae," Paulsbury at London (Thorpe, op. tit., index, p. 676). Was this burh " a fortified town " ?

At Earls Barton a portion of an artificial hillock, or circular mound, called Berry Mount, has been encroached on by the building of the well-known pre-Conquest tower at that place. A field which adjoins the churchyard contains earthworks, and is called Berry Field. The old church of Taplow, Bucks, had been erected at the eastern end of an enclosure, the centre of which was dominated by a barrow, which has been proved to be of pre-Conquest date. The whole occupied high ground known locally as Bury Fields (Walter Johnson, ' Byways in British Archaeology,' 1912, p. 81). The camp on Willbury Hill, near Hitchin, is