A HISTORY OF WARWICKSHIRE 



rather more than half way between the village of Tanworth and that of 

 Solihull, is an ancient earthwork surrounded by a moat and called ' The 

 Mount.' It is in a strong defensive position, on the top of a pro- 

 jecting triangle of high ground in a corner made by the valley of 

 the Blythe ; which stream, after running from north to south on its 

 western side, turns off sharply to the east and protects it on the south. 



The remains consist of an oblong area encircled by a deep moat, on 

 the inner side of which there is a strong earthen rampart ; the moat is 

 square at its eastern and rounded at its western end. The works with 

 their enclosure cover about a couple of acres. The moat is from 1 8 to 

 20 feet wide across the surface of the water that now lies within it ; the 

 vallum is in places as much as 60 feet broad and 20 feet high. An 

 unusual feature in connection with this stronghold is that parts of the 

 interior area, instead of being higher, appear to be lower than the level 

 of the water of the encircling moat. There are two entrances to the 

 enclosure made by embankments across the moat and corresponding 

 breaches in the rampart ; one is at the south-east and the other at the 

 south-west. Mr. Burgess thought that there were traces of an outer 

 enclosure or court abutting on the moat on its eastern side. 1 



Nothing is known of the history of this ancient moated stronghold. 

 Dugdale wrote that ' by the Forme of it and the Depth of its Trenches' 

 it seemed to him to be a Roman work 2 ; but this is quite unlikely. In 

 some ways it resembles the earthwork of uncertain age known as the 

 ' Castle Hills ' at Fillongley. 



WAPPENBURV (4 miles north-east of Leamington.) This little 

 village is situated close to the right bank of the river Leam, and about 

 a mile to the west of the ancient Fosse Way. It was formerly well-nigh 

 enclosed by extensive entrenchments surrounding an area roughly oblong 

 in shape and about 20 acres in extent. The earthworks are now much 

 denuded and also altered in form, and they have in places become 

 almost indistinguishable. Their course is, or was, as follows : from 

 the ford and stepping-stones across the river at the south-east of the 

 village, along the right bank of the Leam in a straight line slightly 

 south of west for a distance of 350 yards; at this point they take a north- 

 westerly direction for nearly 200 yards, to a rounded corner, and then 

 turn north and run in an almost direct but somewhat broken line for 

 300 yards as far as another corner which is almost a right angle ; from 

 this they run directly east for over 250 yards, nearly up to the road by 

 Wappenbury Hall, where all traces of them disappear. On the east 

 side of the village no remains whatever are shown upon the 6-inch 

 ordnance survey ; but in a plan made probably sixty or seventy years 

 ago, and now preserved in Mr. Bloxam's copy of * Dugdale' in Rugby 

 School library, a bank runs from north to south, at a distance of about 

 a hundred yards east of the church, back to the stepping-stones, where 

 it joins the southern rampart in a rounded corner. 



> Burgess in B'ham. and Mid. Inst. Arch. Trans. (1872), p. 87. 

 * Dugdale's Warw. p. 549. 



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