By the Rev. J. J. Reynolds. 



251 



the shaft of a pillar, 1 and hence a pillar or tower. Shaftsburgh or 

 Shaftesbury seems to be simply a Saxon translation of the British 

 Dame the shaft or tower-burgh. Other meanings of the name 

 Palladur have been suggested, but the fact of the Saxons having 

 substituted the word " Shaft " for " Palladur " is, to my mind, a 

 strong presumption of the meaning to be attached to the word. 

 The aborigines of this Island, it is known, were accustomed to 

 erect round towers on lofty wooded eminences. The name therefore 

 may have arisen from such a tower built here by the very earliest 

 inhabitants, the situation being such as they were wont to select, — 

 a high and commanding position in the neighbourhood of a wooded 

 country, and so thickly wooded was it that there was a saying that 

 a squirrel could travel from Shaftesbury to Gillingham without 

 touching ground. In the ordnance map it is still marked as 

 Gillingham Forest. From one of these ancient round towers 

 erected on Castle Hill by those early settlers who journeyed hither 

 perhaps from the plains of Shinar, 2 this town may have received 

 its earlier appellation " Caer Palladur," the city of the Pillar or 

 tower, given to it pre-eminently from the Shaft-like appearance 

 such a tower so situated would have when viewed from the country 

 round. Traces of very ancient masonry have been found on Castle 

 Hill, and tradition from the earliest times asserts that a castle or 

 tower once existed there, yet we know that none has stood there 

 within what may be termed historical times. The ruined British 

 Tower was probably succeeded by a Poman "Castrum Explorato- 

 rium." On the very brow of Castle Hill to the West is a small 

 mount surrounded by intrenchments, its area about an acre. These 



1 Hutchins. 



2 The aborigines, probably of the family of Shem, or at least some early Eastern 

 colony, preserving much of their pristine civilization, were wont to erect peculiar 

 round towers in lofty situations: King and Polwhele call attention to the 

 striking similarity between the old castle at Launceston in Cornwall, and the 

 citadel of Ecbatana, as described by Herodotus. They consider that this simi- 

 larity of style in building, taken with other circumstances, bespeaks an Eastern 

 origin for the first inhabitants of this country, to whom they and others consider 

 the old castle at Launceston may fairly be attributed. 



