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if not have, an evident breastwork, with a deep ditch or trench 

 on the land side." Writing on December 8th, 1891, he said 

 " Burrow or burrows is but another alias or form of A. S. burh, 

 Scand. borg, and in other parts of the North of England and in 

 Scotland the more usual form is brough. One of the finest and 

 most distinctive I am acquainted with in N. Yorkshire is in the 

 parish of Aysgarth, where the inner mound, but slightly 

 elevated above the general level, is surrounded by a perfect 

 circular ditch or moat, and that again by a still nearly perfect 

 vallum. There is another, but with the inner mound more 

 considerably raised, in the Mulgi'ave "Woods, very near the west 

 end of them and the Foss Mill there. I was inspecting several 

 works of the same kind in Galloway two or three weeks 

 since — one very curious one on which the inner mound on the 

 land side (it was girt by the sea on three-fifths of its circuit) 

 was kept up by rude granite-block walling. But I doubted if 

 this were really ancient as the mound was. One of our home 

 finest specimens, however, is very near to Middleham Castle, 

 for it shows distinctly the evidences of two out of the three 

 phases a large number of these burhs have passed through. 

 The very finest and most perfect of all I know is about two or 

 three miles from Dalbeattie (the one by the sea side just named 

 being about six miles from the same town but in the opposite 

 direction). I think I know of 16 or 17 in Kirkcudbrightshire 

 alone, the local name for them there being 'moat' or 'moat-hill.* 

 The one three miles from Dalbeattie is ' moated ' in our English 

 sense, but many of them are not, or not now traceably so. . . It is 

 noteworthy that the Roman Road (on which the camp on Lease 

 Rigg was placed, and which camp originated the High Burrows 

 and Low Burrows Farms' names), [near Danby], when last seen is 

 aiming directly for Goldsborough, and that there is traditional 

 mention of a large earthwork there. I look upon that as the 

 site of the terminal Castra speculatoria to which the Roman 

 Road led " 



On December 11th, 1889, he wrote urging me to make a 

 systematic collection of the old field-names in the Parish of 

 Ingleby. He said : '' Copy every field-name without exception, 

 you can always eliminate afterwards. You will meet with 

 dozens of 'duplicates.' No matter. The very redundancy of 

 the same name may be instructive. It is absolutely true that, 

 conversant with the history of my own parish as I was, I 

 learned more from these counterparts of conveyances* than I had 



* He had, during 1889, recovered about 1,500 field-names in the Parish of 

 Danby (including Glaisdale) extent in 1656, and many of them still extant. 

 He says, "'No one knows what information of this kind yet exists, and 

 but few know the actual value and interest of it." 



