A HISTORY OF LANCASHIRE 



There are no signs of any masonry about the castle, the earthworks of 

 which must therefore have been palisaded with wood. Some excavating, of 

 which traces are still visible on the west side, was once done upon the mount 

 by Dr. Lingard ; he expected to find sepulchral remains, but, in the absence 

 of these, no record or section unfortunately was preserved. 



Castlestede has been variously described as a British camp, and its 

 mount as a Roman botontinus and a sepulchral tumulus ; but it is without 

 doubt a very typical and fine example of a mount and court castle. Of the 

 date of its construction no evidence is, up to the present, forthcoming. As 

 no walls of masonry were ever erected upon the site, this stronghold was 

 probably abandoned for the spot where the present Hornby Castle towers 

 above the River Wenning less than a mile away ; similar migrations to con- 

 tiguous sites will be noted later in the cases of Warrington to Bewsey and 

 West Derby to Liverpool." 



Lancaster. — The town, dominated by its important castle, lies on the 

 south bank of the River Lune, some seven miles from its mouth. The 

 castle, as now seen, is principally a mediaeval structure ; this has been con- 

 siderably altered, moreover, during the last century, by the building of the 

 great Shire Hall, in the place of the ancient towers and walls of its north- 

 west side. 



The site is upon an isolated hill, which is an offshoot projecting into the 

 plain from the high fells to the east. The broad waters of the Lune sweep 

 round it in a curve from east to west some quarter of a mile to the north ; 

 the top of this hill, upon the southern half of which the castle stands, has an 

 altitude of about 120 ft. above sea level ; its sides fall rapidly to the west, 

 north, and east, and less so to the south. The view from the spot is most 

 extensive ; to the west across the flats and over Morecambe Bay ; to the 

 north over the hills of Lancashire and the mountains of the Lake Country ; 

 to the north-east up the Lune valley ; to the east across the high fells as far 

 as the mountains of Yorkshire ; and to the south over the Fylde district. 

 The old church stands upon only slightly lower ground to the north, but the 

 artificial works of the castle overlook it, and the command all round is there- 

 fore complete. Moreover, the site overawed the lowest ford of the Lune, 

 across which a very old and important highway ran north and south. 



Earthworks encircle the north and north-west sides of the entire hill 

 some distance down its slopes. They have apparently nothing to do with 

 the castle, and will be described in the chapter on the Romano-British period. 

 The mediaeval fortress stands across a corner of the site of the Roman 

 castrum. 



There is very little doubt that the present stone castle gradually replaced 

 one of those earlier mount and court earthworks with timber palisading, of 

 which several in the district have been described above. The ground plan 

 of such an earthwork is still easily recognizable. Within it, on the north- 

 west side, stood the usual mount. This, as in many other instances in the 

 country, has been absorbed by the building of the fine rectangular keep, 80 ft. 

 square, of Norman masonry. The present walls round the courtyard of the 

 castle to the south-west of the keep are apparently upon the ramparts of the 



^ " Baines, Lanes, (ed. 1836), v, 536 ; ibid. (ed. 1868), ii, 614 ; Watkins, Rm. Una. 222: Ord 

 burv. i-in. 59 ; old, 91 NE. ; 6-in. 25 NE. ; 25-in. 25, 7. 



528 



