A HISTORY OF DERBYSHIRE 



the north is a long steep slope ascended by an old winding path from 

 the town below. This triangular area was walled round by William 

 Peverel soon after the Conquest ; the late Norman keep at the south 

 apex was not built till 1176, as will be told hereafter in detail. 1 



The circumscribed plot of ground to the north of the keep, known 

 as the Castle Yard, which was used in Elizabethan days as a great 

 pinfold for sheep that trespassed on the deer pastures of the Peak Forest, 

 ' could not at any time have been sufficiently ample to accommodate the 

 numerous establishment of a great feudal chieftain.' 2 Those who took 

 shelter below the castle proper either in Norman or pre-Norman times 

 would require some kind of defence, and hence at some date unknown 

 a kind of outer bailey was formed enclosing the town of the castle, or 

 Castleton, in a wide semicircular stretch, after the same fashion as at 

 Chipping Ongar, Essex. Of this earthwork, a fosse and vallum, long 

 known as the Town Ditch, there is a fairly perfect fragment on the 

 south-east of the town about 200 feet long, and a longer piece further 

 on the east. It may also be plainly noted in a field opposite the ' Bull's 

 Head,' on the west of the town, above the millrace of the stream from 

 the great cavern. In fact, although the Ordnance Survey only shows 

 the eastern portion, Mr. Andrew and the present writer were able to 

 clearly trace the whole of the enclosing semicircle in May, 1905, as 

 shown on Mr. Andrew's plan. 



The earliest mention of this Town Ditch is the eighteenth-century 

 account by Bray : ' An intrenchment, which begins at the lower end of 

 the valley, called the Cave, inclosed the town, ending at the great 

 cavern, and forming a semicircle ; this is now called the Town Ditch, 

 but the whole of it cannot easily be traced, having been destroyed in 

 many parts by buildings and the plough.' 



7. CODNOR CASTLE (xi. 12). The small remains of the once exten- 

 sive castle of Codnor will be described in the topographical section. So 

 far as earthworks are concerned there are considerable portions of a wide 

 and deep moat still extant, particularly on the east side. This moat is 

 probably of fourteenth-century date, when the castle was considerably 

 strengthened and extended. The moat on the north and west sides was 

 quite as perfect as on the east side until about fifty years ago, when 

 considerable search was made for ironstone on the castle site. 8 



8. DUFFIELD CASTLE (xliv. 12}. The highly interesting discovery 

 of the foundations of the immense Norman keep of Duffield Castle in 

 1886 will be described in the topographical section. Here it is only 

 necessary to say that the excavations and investigation of the site known as 

 Castle Orchard brought much that was of interest to light, which showed 

 an occupation of this site much earlier than the Conquest. The sur- 

 rounding earthworks, of which a sketch plan drawn in 1887 is here 



1 Mr. W. H. St. John Hope's article in Derb. Arch. Journ. (1889), xi. 120-126, is the best 

 account of Peak Castle. 



2 Glover's Derbyshire, ii. 197. 



8 The best account of Codnor Castle, its remains and owners, with a plan, is that by Rev. C. 

 Kerry, Derb. Arch. Journ. xiv. 16-33. 



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