190 



Barbury Castle. 



its villages, extending- from Compton Bassett by Clyffe, Binknoll, 

 Wroughton, and Chiseldon to Wanborough. Several of these places 

 were sites of forts in old time. The Ivory at Wroughton (till the 

 seventeenth century and still, ecclesiastically, known as Elyngdon 

 or Elyndun) has the appearance of a Dun, with a vallum, now much 

 broken down, the present road running along its f'oss. In the centre 

 of the district on a spit of high land, precipitous on either flank, 

 Binknoll stands conspicuous. It was a strong little fortress, with 

 one inner and two outer wards, each protected by a single ditch and 

 rampart and a scarped way all round the edge of the steep cliff, 

 probably carrying a palisade. It is, further, planted in a most 

 commanding position, intended to be, as its Saxon name implies, a 

 Beacon-knoll, beacne-cnoll— an eye to watch and a light to warn the 

 country far and near of an approaching danger, or of a summons to 

 assemble; for its bale-fire could be seen from Bath and the long 

 ridges of the Cotteswold, from Castle Combe and Bury Camp, from 

 Kingsbury, Cricklade, Bury Hill, Cirencester, and away to the oolite 

 heights beyond Beady Token, Fairford and Faringdon, all round by 

 the fatal slope of Wanborough, to Badbury and Barbury Castles. 

 Binknoll could hardly have been a Danish or Saxon structure; 1 

 and if this little signal station did exist before the Saxon Conquest, 

 the beacon light blazing from it by night would have been 

 unseen by the Saxon approaching Barbury from the south, while 

 it would have aided in summoning the Briton people to arms 

 from every place in this wide panorama. They would march 

 along the Eoss-way from the north, along the misnamed Ermin 

 Way from the west, and along trails through forest and broad grassy 

 roads, over commons and by cultivated ground, to gather on and 



1 I have given a plan of this little » castle " with a few of the now partly- 

 obliterated works, restored as I well remember them before a tenant of the farm 

 had quarried away the marl from the northern point of the camp and from two- 

 places on its flanks. It presented then, as it incompletely does now, a partly- 

 defended approach to the little bourne that sometimes still flows in the gorge 

 called the Dip or Dipe and which was no doubt in remote time a more perennial 

 stream. Such a water-gate exists at Dudsbury, on the river Stour. and also at 

 feidbury. The inner or most northerly ward has still two deep hollows in it that 

 were probably once dwellings for the guardians of this grassy watch-tower. Rude 

 pottery is plentiful under the soil ; confirming its praj-Saxon origin. 



