A HISTORY OF SUFFOLK 



lines may yet be traced. The conical mount with a base diameter of i6oft. 

 is over 40 ft. in height on the western side towards the bailey, and higher by 

 10 ft. on the eastern side by reason of the decline of the land. The base- 

 court, situated to the west of the mount, is bluntly elliptical, 400 ft. long on 

 the east-to-west axis and 250 ft. wide from north to south, and its boundaries 



SCALE OF FEET 

 O 100 ZOO 900 



En Castlb 



abutted on the north-west and south-west of the mount ; the junction is now 

 invisible owing to the filling in of the fosse of the latter, buildings and 

 gardens covering its site. The vallum and fosse of the bailey have also been 

 obliterated, leaving a scarp only, 14 ft. in height. Within the base-court 

 is a well. 



Framlingham (xlix, 9 and 13). — Framlingham Castle, 9 miles north 

 from Woodbridge, is traditionally said to have been a stronghold of the 

 East Anglian kings, and to have received the assaults of the Danes, although 

 no history of it is known until it was owned by the Bigods subsequent to 

 the Conquest. The horse-shoe bailey is certainly of an earlier date than the 

 supplementary earthworks to be seen towards the north-west, and although 

 its boundaries have been mutilated on the south-east they can yet be distinctly 

 traced. The mount with its broad, flat, but irregularly outlined summit, 

 surmounted by the walls and towers which formed the shell of the former 

 castle, containing an inner court and a well, varies in height from the 

 unequal base of the fosse; the steepest escarpment is 68ft. on the north. 

 At the north-east the scarp is 38 ft. and the counterscarp 25 ft., and the 

 height is gradually reduced towards the south-east to 18 ft., again increasing 

 as it passes the bridge towards the west, at which point the later alterations 

 have destroyed the original plan. On the north-west the counterscarp of 

 the fosse has been removed and a low-level base-court excavated 44 ft. 



596 



