Page:VCH Suffolk 1.djvu/676

 A HISTORY OF SUFFOLK lines may yet be traced. The conical mount with a base diameter of i6oft. is over 40 ft. in height on the western side towards the bailey, and higher by 10 ft. on the eastern side by reason of the decline of the land. The base- court, situated to the west of the mount, is bluntly elliptical, 400 ft. long on the east-to-west axis and 250 ft. wide from north to south, and its boundaries SCALE OF FEET O 100 ZOO 900 En Castlb abutted on the north-west and south-west of the mount ; the junction is now invisible owing to the filling in of the fosse of the latter, buildings and gardens covering its site. The vallum and fosse of the bailey have also been obliterated, leaving a scarp only, 14 ft. in height. Within the base-court is a well. Framlingham (xlix, 9 and 13). — Framlingham Castle, 9 miles north from Woodbridge, is traditionally said to have been a stronghold of the East Anglian kings, and to have received the assaults of the Danes, although no history of it is known until it was owned by the Bigods subsequent to the Conquest. The horse-shoe bailey is certainly of an earlier date than the supplementary earthworks to be seen towards the north-west, and although its boundaries have been mutilated on the south-east they can yet be distinctly traced. The mount with its broad, flat, but irregularly outlined summit, surmounted by the walls and towers which formed the shell of the former castle, containing an inner court and a well, varies in height from the unequal base of the fosse; the steepest escarpment is 68ft. on the north. At the north-east the scarp is 38 ft. and the counterscarp 25 ft., and the height is gradually reduced towards the south-east to 18 ft., again increasing as it passes the bridge towards the west, at which point the later alterations have destroyed the original plan. On the north-west the counterscarp of the fosse has been removed and a low-level base-court excavated 44 ft. 596