By Tom Burgess, Esq., F.S.A. 



315 



kitchen garden now stands. His skilled military workmen found 

 probably outside these entrenchments a rampart at some distance in 

 the park, which had been the home of the villeins and serfs of the 

 Saxon thane, who held it. This was the weak side of the defences. 

 A ditch of great depth was cut now or a century later, when John 

 Marachal was governor, through the Bear yard, at the back of the 

 Crown inn, and so on to the westward, until the natural features of 

 the ground joined it with the castle ditch. On the other side it 

 terminated over the railway. This piece of ground was walled and 

 turretted and gated until no hostile force could possibly pass to the 

 castle without the permission of the garrison. The position was 

 thus secured, and on the top of the mound the castle proper, and 

 the domestic buildings, with the gate-houses, were then erected. 

 Leland thus describes it — " There is a castle on the west side of the 

 town, stately advanced upon an high ground, defended partly by 

 nature and partly with dykes, the earth whereof is cast up aslope, 

 and that of a great height, for the defence of the wall. This castle 

 was made in Henry the First's days by one Roger, Bishop of Salis- 

 bury, Chancellor and Treasurer to the King. Such a piece of 

 castle work, so costly and strong, was never afore set up by any 

 bishop in England. The keep or donjon, set upon an hill cast up by 

 hand, is a piece of work of incredible cost. There appears in the 

 gate of it six or seven places for portculleses, and much goodly 

 building was in it. It is now (1540-1542) in ruins ; and part of 

 the front of the towers of the gate of the keep, and the chapel in 

 it, were carried full unprofitably, into the building of Master 

 Baynton's house at Bromham, scant three miles." 



Mr. Burgess then, by means of two plans of the castle, which 

 he had prepared from the description given by Leland, pointed out 

 to the audience its several features as they had probably from time 

 to time been introduced and modified. 



The Chairman (Lord Nelson) having thanked Mr. Burgess for 

 his very full and interesting account of the castle, and more par- 

 ticularly his explanatory references to other earthworths, said it 

 appeared to him that the matter which had been brought before 

 them, by a gentleman so well acquainted with old castles and 



VOL. XIX. NO. LVII. 2 B 



