Page:VCH Staffordshire 1.djvu/386

 A HISTORY OF STAFFORDSHIRE intrenchment has partly been removed. Here probably was the entrance with the usual bastion of earth on one or both sides of it, and the length of vallum possibly belonging to another branch of the fort, but this is only conjecture. There is a large and a small pool of water to the north of the fort. The fencing of the area somewhat encroaches upon the ancient work. The situation conforms only in a measure to that of the class in which it is placed, its altitude not being a very high one, and there is some absence of abutting steeply sloping ground. It may be that the duplicate defence, of which there is some indication, took the place of these characteristics, and of course the necessities of a particular site must always have been to the fore in the adoption thereof. The site is now woody, and cannot be recognized without close inspection. STONE. BURY BANK lies in the valley of the Trent at a point some 1 2 miles from its northern sources, and 5 miles south of Stoke-on-Trent, and 2 miles north of the ancient town of Stone, and here at Darlaston the valley and the swelling wooded hills present great natural charms, and amidst them ' Bury Bank ' is planted. The road level to the east of it is given as 321-4, and that immediately to the south of it as 356-4. Its form may be called that of an irregular ellipse with the longer axis north-west and south-east, having an extreme length within the inner vallum of 239 yds, and an extreme width of 1 15 yds. The area within the inner rampart contains 3$ acres. With the exception of a length to the north-west, steep slopes surround the works. The exact lines of the defences would seem to be not only governed by the contours of the ground, but also shaped after the rules of fortification. The ramparts and intrenchments are regulated by the necessi- ties of defence. There is a well-defined entrance to the north-west shaped as it were into a specially defended barbican. In the opposite quarter to this entrance are indications of another entrance. In the midst of the inclosure there is in the southern part a raised mound which is remarkable as not occurring in any of the other Staffordshire cases of this class of fort. Whether its purpose was for military tactics, or as a place of sepulture it is hard to say ; for this was the ' Royal Mansion ' of King Wlferus who governed Mercia from 657 to 676, and according to the suggestion of Dr. Plot it may have been the place of his burial, or it is not beyond probability that this mound carried a wooden structure as a last resort for safety within the fort, and was in fact a prototype of the Norman keep. What however its special purpose was could only be determined by the work of the pick and spade, but this is hardly possible now as trees have been thickly planted over the fort within recent years. The present writer in 1892 had by permission a day's digging done, but without any satisfactory result. Robert Garner, F.L.S., in the supplement to his Natural History of the County of Stafford, writes : The author was one of a party this year (1860) to open the large mound in the centre of the camp at Bury Bank ; an attempt made to find the interments was unsuccessful, for at the base, in the centre, nothing was seen but a heap of stones, some bits of charcoal, and small fragments of bone. It is a pity that these disregarded fragments were not preserved, for they strongly suggest interment. The inner vallum of the area was cut through at the time of the day's digging above mentioned, and its section showed its construction to be of earth and rubble stone. To the west of the mound 342