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 A HISTORY OF DERBYSHIRE the north is a long steep slope ascended by an old winding path from the town below. This triangular area was walled round by William Peverel soon after the Conquest ; the late Norman keep at the south apex was not built till 1176, as will be told hereafter in detail. 1 The circumscribed plot of ground to the north of the keep, known as the Castle Yard, which was used in Elizabethan days as a great pinfold for sheep that trespassed on the deer pastures of the Peak Forest, ' could not at any time have been sufficiently ample to accommodate the numerous establishment of a great feudal chieftain.' 2 Those who took shelter below the castle proper either in Norman or pre-Norman times would require some kind of defence, and hence at some date unknown a kind of outer bailey was formed enclosing the town of the castle, or Castleton, in a wide semicircular stretch, after the same fashion as at Chipping Ongar, Essex. Of this earthwork, a fosse and vallum, long known as the Town Ditch, there is a fairly perfect fragment on the south-east of the town about 200 feet long, and a longer piece further on the east. It may also be plainly noted in a field opposite the ' Bull's Head,' on the west of the town, above the millrace of the stream from the great cavern. In fact, although the Ordnance Survey only shows the eastern portion, Mr. Andrew and the present writer were able to clearly trace the whole of the enclosing semicircle in May, 1905, as shown on Mr. Andrew's plan. The earliest mention of this Town Ditch is the eighteenth-century account by Bray : ' An intrenchment, which begins at the lower end of the valley, called the Cave, inclosed the town, ending at the great cavern, and forming a semicircle ; this is now called the Town Ditch, but the whole of it cannot easily be traced, having been destroyed in many parts by buildings and the plough.' 7. CODNOR CASTLE (xi. 12). The small remains of the once exten- sive castle of Codnor will be described in the topographical section. So far as earthworks are concerned there are considerable portions of a wide and deep moat still extant, particularly on the east side. This moat is probably of fourteenth-century date, when the castle was considerably strengthened and extended. The moat on the north and west sides was quite as perfect as on the east side until about fifty years ago, when considerable search was made for ironstone on the castle site. 8 8. DUFFIELD CASTLE (xliv. 12}. The highly interesting discovery of the foundations of the immense Norman keep of Duffield Castle in 1886 will be described in the topographical section. Here it is only necessary to say that the excavations and investigation of the site known as Castle Orchard brought much that was of interest to light, which showed an occupation of this site much earlier than the Conquest. The sur- rounding earthworks, of which a sketch plan drawn in 1887 is here 1 Mr. W. H. St. John Hope's article in Derb. Arch. Journ. (1889), xi. 120-126, is the best account of Peak Castle. 2 Glover's Derbyshire, ii. 197. 8 The best account of Codnor Castle, its remains and owners, with a plan, is that by Rev. C. Kerry, Derb. Arch. Journ. xiv. 16-33. 380