DUFFIELD CASTLE. 147 



family held and gave name to its special allotment. This is the 

 key to the plan of the later and greater majority of purely English 

 earthworks. They were not intended for the defence of a tribe or 

 territory, nor for the accommodation of fighting men, but for the 

 centre and defence of a private estate, for the accommodation 

 of the lord and his household, for the protection of his tenants 

 generally, should they be attacked, and for the safe housing, in 

 time of war, of their flocks and herds. 



"These works, thrown up in England in the ninth and tenth 

 centuries, are seldom, if ever, rectangular, nor are they governed 

 to any great extent by the character of the ground. First was cast 

 up a truncated cone of earth, standing at its natural slope, from 

 twelve to even fifty or sixty feet in height. This " mound," 

 " motte," or " burh," the " mota " of our records, was formed 

 from the contents of a broad and deep circumscribing ditch. 

 This ditch, proper to the mound, is now sometimes wholly or 

 partially filled up, but it seems always to have been present, being 

 in fact the parent of the mound. Berkhampstead is a fine example 

 of such a mound, with the original ditch. At Caerleon, Tickhill, 

 and Lincoln it has been in part filled up ; at Cardiff it was wholly 

 so, but has recently been most carefully cleared out, and its 

 original depth and breadth are seen to have been very formidable. 

 Though usually artificial, these mounds are not always so. Durham, 

 Launceston, Montacute, Dunster, Kestormel, Nant Cribba, are 

 natural hills ; Windsor, Tickhill, Lewes, Norwich, Ely, and 

 Devizes are partly so ; at Sherborne and Hedingham the mound 

 is a natural platform scarped by art ; at Tutbury, Pontefract, and 

 Bramber, where the natural platform was also large, it has been 

 scarped, and a mound thrown up upon it. 



" Connected with the mound is usually a base court, or en- 

 closure, sometimes oval or horseshoe-shaped, but if of the age of the 

 mound always more or less rounded. This enclosure had also its 

 bank and ditch on its outward faces, its rear resting on the ditch of 

 the mound, and the area was often further strengthened by a bank 

 along the crest of the scarp of the ditch. Now and then, as at 

 Old Sarum, there is an additional but slighter bank placed out- 



