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An Address by the President, Nevil Story Masxelyne, Esq., M.P., F.R.&J 

 Delivered to the Annual Meeting at Swindon, August 10th, 1886. 



|ARBUBY CASTLE shares with Old Sarum, Carisbrooke 

 r J (Wihtgarsesbyrg), and a few more old fortresses, the 

 distinction of being mentioned in the " Saxon Chronicle" as one of 

 the scenes of important events in English history. It seems in- 

 dubitable that Barbury is the Beran Byrig, in the nominative Byrg, 

 of the Saxon Chronicle (Beran Byrg in the Parker MS.) . Byrg 

 is, of course, the Old English Burg, Burh, which becomes our 

 English word borough, and in other cases than the nominative takes 

 the form of Byrig. The termination Bury for many names of places 

 is the same word. It implies a fortified place or mound. Beran is, 

 no doubt, the old Welsh or Celtic name for the place; Beran Byrg 

 being the equivalent in West-Saxon parlance for the expression 

 Beran Castle. Beran might be a corruption of Bryn—a hill, in 

 Welsh— of which a form is Aran connected with the Greek fy 0 y. 

 A more probable derivation, however, would seem to be the Welsh 

 Bur, or Bum, its diminutive— an enclosure or entrenchment— a word 

 of possibly a similar origin to that of the Saxon word Burh, Burg, 

 or Byrg. It would mean, then, the camp or castle. The high 

 ridge of Hakpen dips at its N.E. end into a deep hollow or gap, from 

 which the steep of Barbury rises somewhat abruptly. A road, 

 however, leads directly up the face of the hill and enters the circum- 

 vallation at a gap which appears from the form of the inner mound 

 to have been an original entrance. The area of the enclosed 

 space is a little less than twelve acres. The form of the camp 

 is that of an irregular oval— i.e., a section of an egg, the small 

 end of the egg-formed area pointing nearly W. The level of the 

 floor is about 20ft. higher towards the centre than at the western 

 end. The vallum, where it is very high on the N.W. and S.W. 



