180 
Dachury Castle. 
An Address by the President, Nevit Srory Masxetyne, Esq., M.P., F.R.S., 
Delivered to the Annual Meeting at Swindon, August 10th, 1886. 
ARBURY CASTLE shares with Old Sarum, Carisbrooke 
(Wihtgaresbyrg), and a few more old fortresses, the 
distinction of being mentioned in the “ Saxon Chronicle” as one of 
the scenes of important events in English history. It seems in- 
dubitable that Barbury is the Beran Byrig, in the nominative Byrg, 
of the Saxon Chronicle (Beran Byrg in the Parker MS.). Byrg 
is, of course, the Old English Burg, Burh, which becomes our 
English word borough, and in other cases than the nominative takes 
the form of Byrig. The termination Bury for many names of places 
is the same word. It implies a fortified place or mound. Beran is, 
no doubt, the old Welsh or Celtic name for the place; Beran Byrg 
being the equivalent in West-Saxon parlance for the expression 
Beran Castle. Beran might be a corruption of Bryn—a hill, in 
Welsh—of which a form is Aran connected with the Greek dpos. 
A more probable derivation, however, would seem to be the Welsh 
Bur, or Bura, its diminutive—an enclosure or entrenchment—a word 
of possibly a similar origin to that of the Saxon word Burh, Burg, 
or Byrg. It would mean, then, the camp or castle. The high 
ridge of Hakpen dips at its N.E. end into a deep hollow or gap, from 
which the steep of Barbury rises somewhat abruptly. A road, 
however, leads directly up the face of the hill and enters the circum- 
vallation at a gap which appears from the form of the inner mound 
to Lave been an original entrance. The area of the enclosed 
space is a little less than twelve acres. The form of the camp 
is that of an irregular oval—i.e., a section of an egg, the small 
end of the egg-formed area pointing nearly W. The level of the 
floor is about 20ft. higher towards the centre than at the western 
end, The vallum, where it is very high on the N.W. and 8.W. 
