Page:VCH Essex 1.djvu/337

 ANCIENT EARTHWORKS UNDER this heading we include both defensive earthworks, and those constructed for other purposes, but as interest largely centres upon the former, we confine our notes mainly thereto, mentioning tumuli, etc., in brief, among miscellaneous works. Throughout the large county of Essex, we find no examples of the earliest defensive works such as can be attributed to the stone age or bronze period ; perhaps the marshy nature of the low-lying districts and the thickly-wooded character of the other parts were not favourable to the settlements of early man, or it may be that long years of cultivation have swept away all traces of the earliest defences. In the succeeding periods of time, from the earliest part of the iron age, our land has been cultivated, and homes have been established, but of purely defensive works we have no example which can with cer- tainty claim earlier date than the Celtic iron age. Of that time, or about the period of the Roman invasions, we have important fortified positions, but of demonstrably Roman ' camps,' perhaps none. Passing to later days, Essex can boast of some of the most charac- teristic examples of the ' mount and court ' type of castles ; the earth- works of these we may describe, but the castles of masonry which in some instances afterwards occupied the same sites, will be referred to by other writers. In the following notes the aim has been to group defensive works of each class or character together, with but little attempt at chronolo- gical order ; for it must be remembered that some of the earliest types of works were repeated in after days, and that it is therefore, in the absence of the invaluable aid of spade-labour, impossible to judge the age by the form of earthwork. On account of the simplicity of its plan, rather than of evidence of early construction, we mention Gryme's Dyke first among the defensive earthworks of Essex, passing next to enclosures defended by rampart and fosse. Such defensive works are usually known as * camps,' but the word is not to be regarded as signifying temporary occupation only, as in many instances these fortified positions may have been intended for permanent use. 275