190 Barbury Castle. 
its villages, extending from Compton Bassett by Clyffe, Binknoll, 
Wroughton, and Chiseldon to Wanborough. Several of these places 
were sites of forts in old time. The Ivory at Wroughton (till the 
seventeenth century and still, ecclesiastically, known as Elyngdon 
or Elyndun) has the appearance of a Dun, with a vallum, now much 
broken down, the present road running along its foss. In the centre 
of the district on a spit of high land, precipitous on either flank, 
Binknoll stands conspicuous. It was a strong little fortress, with 
one inner and two outer wards, each protected by a single ditch and 
rampart and a scarped way all round the edge of the steep cliff, 
probably carrying a palisade. It is, further, planted in a most 
commanding position, intended to be, as its Saxon name implies, a 
Beacon-knoll, beacne-cnoll—an eye to watch and a light to warn the 
country far and near of an approaching danger, or of a summons to 
assemble; for its bale-fire could be seen from Bath and the long 
ridges of the Cotteswold, from Castle Combe and Bury Camp, from 
Ringsbury, Cricklade, Bury Hill, Cirencester, and away to the oolite 
heights beyond Ready Token, Fairford and Faringdon, all round by 
the fatal slope of Wanborough, to Badbury and Barbury Castles. 
Binknoll could hardly have been a Danish or Saxon structure ; ' 
and if this little signal station did exist before the Saxon Conquest, 
the beacon light blazing from it by night would have been 
unseen by the Saxon approaching Barbury from the south, while 
it would have aided in summoning the Briton people to arms 
from every place in this wide panorama. They would march 
along the Foss-way from the north, along the misnamed Ermin 
Way from the west, and along trails through forest and broad grassy 
roads, over commons and by cultivated ground, to gather on and 
1] have given a plan of this little ‘‘ castle” with a few of the now partly- 
obliterated works, restored as I well remember them before a tenant of the farm 
had quarried away the marl from the northern point of the camp and from two- 
places on its flanks. It presented then, as it incompletely does now, a partly- 
defended approach to the little bourne that sometimes still flows in the gorge 
called the Dip or Dipe and which was no doubt in remote time a more perennial 
stream. Such a water-gate exists at Dudsbury, on the river Stour, and also at 
Sidbury. The inner or most northerly ward has still two deep hollows in it that 
were probably once dwellings for the guardians of this grassy watch-tower. Rude 
pottery is plentiful under the soil; confirming its pra-Saxon origin. 
