REMAINS OF THE PRE-NORMAN PERIOD 
the Beacon Hill at Aspatria and the Hesket tumulus, already described. 
The late Rev. J. Maughan of Bewcastle has recorded a find (about 1858) 
of a skeleton buried with knees contracted and lying on the left side, 
not in a kist, but roughly walled up and covered with a heap of stones 
known as Murchie’s Cairn, to which he ascribed a ‘ Pagan Saxon’ 
origin, We may mention Dunmail Raise as traditionally connected 
with the last fight (945) of the last king of Cumberland, Dummail 
or Domhnall, who however cannot have been buried there, as he died 
in Rome much later, and the cairn seems to have been opened long 
ago without much result. But it may be noted here that all tumuli 
are not prehistoric, nor are they all places of burial. Some are artificial 
bases for a certain type of dwelling. The moated mound, with or 
without a separate base-court, is found also in Normandy, Germany 
and Scandinavia. In its fully-developed form it was a hillock, improved 
into a steep cone, and surrounded by a dyke which was palisaded. On 
the top the lord and his family lived in a wooden house ; near at hand 
and within view from this ‘howe’ was a dyked and palisaded base- 
court, in which the cattle and thralls were kept at night. 
That this was used by the Normans in our district can be seen 
from a comparison of the two earliest homes of the Le Fleming family, 
Aldingham Moat and Carnarvon Castle at Beckermet. The former is 
in a fair state of preservation—not in Cumberland, but not far from 
its borders—in Furness; the latter has nearly disappeared, but is de- 
scribed by Sir Daniel Fleming in his account of Cumberland (1671). 
He says that the ruins consisted of an oblong square of about 100 by 
85 yards, with a ditch 12 yards broad and 4 yards deep (compare some 
of the ‘square camps’ above mentioned). The entrance was at the 
west end, opposite to which was a round artificial hill called Coney- 
garth Cop, about 12 yards high, and the top 6 yards broad. It was 
formerly called Carnarvon Castle, he says, the early home of that branch 
of the Flemings who settled there in the beginning of the twelfth 
century. We see from this that the mote was used in Norman times, 
and that the country folk in Cumberland talked Welsh, for ar-mhon 
(arfon) means ‘opposite Mona,’ in sight of the Isle of Man; and 
Caernarvon in this sense is not a name borrowed from the castle, famous 
at a much later day, on the Menai Straits. Coney-garth Cop would 
be the English name, ‘ King’s Court Hill,’ as if, still earlier, this had 
been the caer of some British kinglet or the possession of some greater 
sovereign. 
Not far away is Egremont, Egener-mot, the mote on the Ehen ; 
and it has been remarked by antiquaries that this Norman castle is 
on a hill artificially scarped, and perhaps, they have said, a ‘ Danish 
fort.” The anonymous author of The Antiquities of West Cumberland 
(1849) says that similar artificial hills existed at Wotobank (formerly 
Wodabank), Borough Hill near Braystones, between the Ker and the 
Ehen, Ivy Hill near Coneygarth and another at Frizington. These 
are different from the British hill-fort in its more pronounced types, 
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