Page:VCH Cornwall 1.djvu/556

 A HISTORY OF CORNWALL stone entrenchments which occupy the tops of prominent hills. They are roughly circular following the shape of the hill, large in diameter and having generally two and in some cases three lines of entrenchments. In many the walls are still of considerable height. Dr. Borlase wrote in 1769 of Chyoone Castle in Morvah : 'By the ruins of these walls I judge that the outermost could not be less than 10 feet high, and the innermost about 15, but rather more.' 1 As a class these hill castles stand, plain to be seen, on the summits of steep hills. Conspicuous for miles, they were surely the work of confident men who wished to command the country and had no fear of being seen. Castle an Dinas in St. Columb lords it haughtily over 100 miles of land and sea, and Chyoone Castle in the west, only second, tops the hill crest like a crown. Of the total number of this class given in the appendix, it is note- worthy that nine are west of Redruth, and of these seven are in the small district in the extreme western end of the county beyond Hayle estuary, while there are none on the tops of the greater hills on the Bodmin moors. The works put in the third list are very different. They are as a rule single banks of earth enclosing spaces of which some are round, some square with rounded corners, and some oblong, both round and square-sided. They stand on low ground, and in most cases where the land slopes to a river or stream. Hidden in sheltered places and now in many cases ploughed down so that only a low mound or terrace marks the site, they are not easy to find. Mr. S. R. Pattison observed 3 of Upton Castle in Lewannick that it was commanded on all sides, and this is true of all these entrenchments which are in the neighbourhood of the hills. Near Upton, in the parishes of North Hill, Lezant, and Linkinhorne, there are many, and all, even within the limits of human eyesight, may be said to be at the mercy of any man who would hide himself under a furze bush on the Caradon Hills. From this it would seem to follow that to the men who threw up these earthworks the hills with their castles were a matter of no moment, and they sought to protect themselves against quite other dangers. They have been divided into two divisions, distinguishing those which have more than one bank or line, or which have outworks or the appearance of an outer court, and though subsequent research may show that this is not a real ground for making a distinction, yet in the present state of knowledge it seems worth making. It might have been possible to divide this class further into round and square-sided, but some of them are very irregular, and some might be considered as either, while the other features by which they have been classed are more uniform. Some such subdivision may yet be established. Beyond this classification they do not lend themselves readily to fit the headings suggested in the report of the committee. 1 Antiquities of Cornwall, p. 347. 1 Jouni. Roy. Inst. Cormv. (1871), vol. iv. pt. xiii. p. 73. 452