ANCIENT EARTHWORKS 



' The Buries,' Repton, long thought to be Roman, has also been included 

 in this class, though with some hesitation. 



The moated homestead sites of Class F are not nearly so numerous 

 in Derbyshire as in the neighbouring Palatinate of Chester and in most 

 of the counties of eastern and southern England. This paucity of 

 examples doubtless arises from so large a proportion of its limited area 

 being rocky and mountainous, and altogether unsuited to trenchwork 

 defence of this character. Nevertheless an interesting and diversified 

 number of moated sites are to be found in the southern and western 

 parts of the shire. Twenty-five instances are briefly described, and plans 

 given of the more remarkable. These are all the cases which were 

 sufficiently well defined to attract the attention of the Ordnance surveyors, 

 though there are several remains of moat indications round other manor 

 houses or their sites. Several well-defined rectangular moats have been 

 filled up in the course of agricultural and farm improvements during 

 the past forty years, as at Hollington in Brailsford parish, and at 

 Lullington in the far south of the county. It may well be supposed 

 that in some cases included under homestead moats there may have 

 been a pre-Conquest, or even possibly a pre-historic, origin for such 

 earthworks, but their construction is said to have been continued until as 

 late as the days of Elizabeth ; all that is implied by inclusion in this class 

 is that the evidence is almost conclusive that the moat in question once 

 surrounded a dwelling-house, farmstead, or stackyard. The oval-shaped 

 moat seems as a rule to betoken an earlier date than those of rect- 

 angular formation. The Cubley example, an irregular oval, is certainly 

 of old origin, and the oval one at Duncourt Farm is probably still 

 older. The fragment of the moat at Stainsby Hall is sufficient to show 

 that it was of oval or circular shape. 



In several counties, where there is a rich depth of earth and con- 

 siderable paucity of stone, as in Bedfordshire and the East Riding of 

 Yorkshire, the precincts of monastic sites were protected by moats and 

 earthen ramparts, the latter being doubtless stockaded. Derbyshire had 

 but few religious houses, and these mostly where stone was plentiful ; 

 but there are two examples of this style of enclosure on a small scale of 

 religious sites, one at the Preceptory of the Knights Hospitallers at 

 Yeaveley, and the other in Old Duffield round a grange of Darley Abbey. 



THE GREY DITCH 



Other counties, such as Essex and Cambridge on the east, or Dorset 

 and Wilts on the west, have far more important dykes or defensive lines 

 of entrenchment than Derbyshire, but the Grey Ditch is not without its 

 interest. It shows itself plainly when traversing at right angles the high 

 road in the valley from Brough to Brad well, telling probably of early 

 tribal resistance to onslaughts up this valley. Just after passing ' Eden 

 Tree,' the Grey Ditch (x. 9, 10) may be noticed on the right-hand side 

 of the road, climbing up the gradual ascent toward Mich Low. Here it 



359 



