Page:The New Forest - its history and its scenery.djvu/50

Rh It has, I am aware, been urged that since the Old-English churches were chiefly built of wood, we are not likely to find any ruins. This may be so. But by no process of reasoning can the absence of a thing prove its former presence. Nor need we pay much attention to the argument drawn from such names as Castle Malwood, The Castle near Burley, Castle Hill on the banks of the Avon, Lucas Castle, and Broomy and Thompson Castles in Ashley Walk. If these names prove anything, it is that there were a vast number of castles in the Forest, and very few churches. But Castle Malwood was standing long after the afforestation; whilst the Castle at Burley, and Castle Hill, and the others, were merely earthen fortifications and entrenchments, made by the Kelts and West-Saxons. Nor must we be led away by the few Forest names ending in ton, the Old-English tun, which, after all, means more often only a few scattered homesteads than even a village, still less a town or city, in the modern sense of the word. 32