225 



This is the key to the plan of the later English earthworks : they were intended 

 for the defence of a private estate, and not of a tribe or territory for the accom- 

 modation of fighting men. "These works, thrown up in England in the ninth 

 and tenth century, 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 burgh, the mota of our records, was formed from 

 the contents of a broad and deep circumscribing ditch." Whatever circular 

 moated mounds may have been erected and used by the British in addition to 

 their larger camps, the Saxons and the Danes have unquestionably left many 

 behind, with names terminating in ton. Mounds, surrounded by timber palisades, 

 were raised in the Saxon period by Edward the Elder, and his sister yEthelfred. 

 A stockade of wood, like a New Zealand pah, such as is figured in the Bayeux 

 Tapestry, was the form of this old English, and by no means un-Norman fast- 

 ness ; Teutonic, not Celtic in its type.— Quarterltj Revieiv. July, 1879, page 153. 



Dorstone Church was visited, but the alterations carried out about sixty 

 years ago (1827) have swept away many beauties of the Mediaeval and earlier 

 periods of architecture. A small chantry chapel, on the north side of the Church, 

 supposed to have been erected by Richard de Brito, one of the murderers of 

 Thomas a Becket, was taken down in the course of alterations ; a stone in the 

 shaiJe of a window-sill was then discovered, with the following inscription: — 

 "Hanc capellara ex veto ad Mariam Virginem, Ricardus de Brito dedicavit." 

 Unfortunately, this stone has been lost. On this north side a very fine double 

 piscina and corbel, probably belonging to this chapel, remain, built into the wall 

 at its eastern end. They very much resemble, both in style and material, the 

 beautiful piscina in the chapel of Grosmont Church. An arched recess on the 

 south side of the chancel formerly contained a wooden effigy, also unfortunately 

 gone. The gallery at the west end of the Church, into the erection of which the 

 lower portion of the old Rood Screen, 15th Century work, has been introduced, 

 has the usual richly-carved and perforated pattern of that period. The Benefaction 

 Tables are interesting. One of them at the west end intimates that the donor 

 has not left his gift "for dogs and swine," by which be meant "lazy, drunken 

 fellows, but for deserving people. " 



There still remained the business of the Club to be transacted, and some 

 papers to be read. For this purpose the Rev. T. P. Powell very kindly placed 

 the commodious rooms of the School at the disposal of the Club. The Rev. R. 

 Remington was elected a member, and the following gentlemen were proposed for 

 election : — Rev. J. O. Bevan, of Vowchurch ; Rev. Willis F. A. Lambert, of 

 Peterchurch ; Mr. E. L. G. Robinson, of Poston, in the parish of Vowchurch ; 

 and Dr. Oswald Lane and Mr. Thomas Meadows, both of Hereford. The 

 President reported for the information of members — firstly — that "The Hereford- 

 shire Flora " might be expected to be in the hands of subscribers at 10s. per copy 

 by the ensuing autumn. Secondly, with reference to the republication of the 

 very earliest numbers of the Transactions of the Club, viz., the Transactions of 

 the years 1852 to 1865 inclusive, which were issued in the form of pamphlets, of 

 15 



