Page:A Book of Dartmoor.djvu/145

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A SAXON BURRH
105

an earthwork round it as a ring. In this are remains of iron-smelting.

There can be little doubt as to the period of this latter. It was the burrh of the Anglo-Saxon, and was in every point similar to the mottes of the Merovingians in France. On the Bayeux tapestry three fortified places are represented—Dinan, Dol, and Rennes—and all are of the same type. A mound of earth was either thrown up, or a hilltop was artificially shaped like a tumulus. On the top of this the thegn erected his fortress of wood. In the Bayeux representations the superstructures at Dol and Rennes are of timber, and that of Dinan is partly of timber and partly of stone. A flying bridge of wood led from the gate in the palisading of the outer ring, supported on posts, and conducted by an incline to the gate of the citadel. An example of one of these camps at Bishopston in Gower has been explored recently.[1] The stumps of the pales were there found embedded in the clay of the bank, in tolerable preservation.

In the valley below Burleigh Camp, commanding the ancient road from Exeter by Okehampton to Launceston, was a third camp, that has been for the most part obliterated; it occupied a rising knoll of limestone, and this latter has been quarried, so that the camp earthworks have been either destroyed or buried under the accumulations from the quarry.

The locality is of great interest. The ridge goes by the name of Galford, and there is reason to think

  1. Archceologia Cambrensis, July, 1899. The camp was excavated by Colonel W. L. Morgan.