ANCIENT EARTHWORKS 



being a defensive earthwork of the class we are now considering ; and this 

 notwithstanding the curious interment found below it. 



History, unfortunately, has no account to give of the origin of this 

 castle. Newton was the seat of a barony, of which this mount was very 

 probably the site, even if it was not the spot where the earlier 'king's house' 

 of Edward the Confessor's time, mentioned in Domesday, stood.^* 



Penwortham. — Just across the river, to the west of Preston, 70 yds. 

 north-north-west of Penwor- 

 tham Church, and within the 

 area of the present extended 

 graveyard, a conspicuous artifi- 

 cial mount crowns the summit 

 of a large hillock which bears 

 the name of the ' Castle Hill.' 

 This is the earthwork, now much 

 I worn and altered, of a small 

 mount and court castle of the 

 usual type. It is situated on 

 the south bank of, and some six 

 miles up, the estuary of the 

 River Ribble, that important 

 natural boundary of territories 

 in ancient times. 



It stands upon the top of a 

 cliff, at the end of a high pro- 

 montory which projects towards 

 the north, being a spur of the 

 flat heights of Penwortham. 

 On the west the site is separated 

 from the adjacent elevated land 

 by a long and deep gorge. To 

 the north is the river, which in 

 former days washed its base. 

 On the east, a tract of low re- 

 claimed land occupies an older 

 bed of the Ribble, a branch of 

 which at no distant date en- 

 circled the Holme (then an 

 island) and ran along the foot of 

 the cliff which bounds the old 

 churchyard and the castle hill. 

 , The end of the headland (C on 

 plan), thus so well protected by 

 nature, has an elevation of 60 ft. above sea level. On its south-eastern 

 side rises the oval hill (AB) upon which the fortalice was constructed ; 

 this is some 30 ft. higher than the plateau (C). At the south end of 



" Dom. Bk. fol. 269^ ; Gibson, Manchester Lit. and Phil. Soc. (Ser. z), vii, 325 ; Lanes, and Ches. Hist. 

 Soc. iv, 205 ; XXV, 107 ; Baines, Hist. Lanes, (ed. 1868), ii, 217, 218 ; Ord. Surv. i-in. 84, old 89 SW. ; 

 6-in. lOI SE. ; 25-in. lOI, 16. 



533 



Ho/me 



SCALE OF ntr 

 100 ZOO 200 



SLCTION 



from DlAoE SameSca/e 



HI vex 



5>tCTI0N frgmV.toC.Same Scale- 





Castlb Hill, Penwortham 



