Just my speculations

In the afternoon a visit to a "castle" in the extreme south west of the county. Actually it is just over the county boundary, but this is an area where the county bleeds away, so it is disputed as to where exactly the line should run (obviously the county boundary has been fixed by the Ordnance Survey, but in medieval times the common lands were intermixed so that it was impossible to say where one parish ended and another started; also the river at this point is so shallow and meandering that it is not a reliable guide; also there is no tradition of beating the bounds which indicates the bounds were not certain). I have put the word castle in inverted commas because I am far from sure that it warrants the description.



Above: the site is private property, but looking over the wire fence I could see earthworks that may be Norman but equally could be far older. Ten Bronze Age hand axes were found in the field next to the earthworks, aerial surveys reveal Bronze Age round barrows dotted across the landscape, and an Acheulian hand-axe (25,000 years old) pushes settlement back to the Palaeolithic era.

Also compelling is the site - it makes no sense for the Normans to have put a castle here on land easily overlooked (archers on the ridge of land above would have been able to easily fire arrows into the castle) and with soggy ground liable to flooding by the erratic river. Probably we are looking at a prehistoric ringwork that was reused by the Normans and then abandoned when the unsuitability of the site became apparent. The name of the village is Saxon and it is mentioned in Domesday Book as being held by Bardi.



Above: here you can see the ditch around the inner enclosure. There is no record of a castle being built here. The Victoria County History merely lists the holders of the manorial lands.



Above: within the second ringwork is a stone building now used as the parish church. Traditionally it was the chapel of the castle (but if some of the castle was in stone we would expect to find other stone remains?). You can see the ridge of high ground on the right - anyone standing on that ridge can see right down into the earthworks.



Above: the entrance to the church is decorated by ancient carvings which are either Saxon or Norman (it is not always easy to tell, since most of the sculptors in Norman England were Saxons and on a local level carried on the Saxon artistic styles).

In my view the earthworks probably represent a ritual site used and reused over millennia. These centres were almost certainly the venue of "performances" designed to mark the phases of the agricultural year and give a unity to local tribal society. It was also probably a quasi-military compound where the males of the community prepared for hunting expeditions and parochial warfare (this usage would perhaps account for the oral tradition that it was a "castle").

Reciting poems and folksongs about ancestral warriors; consumption of ritual foods (meat, especially hares?); psyching each other up to display courage and audacity etc.

Just my speculations. Who really knows what went on at these places. Despite the drab day the breeze blowing through the trees was wonderfully mild and enervating.