Page:A Book of the West (vol. 2).djvu/64

CHAPTER IV.

CORNISH CASTLES

The ancient camps—Their kinds—1. Rectangular, Roman—2. The Saxon burh—3. The Celtic circular or oval camp — The lis and the dun—4. Stone fortresses—Heroic legends in Ireland—The Firbolgs—5. The stone castle with mortar, Norman—No good examples.

ANYONE with a very little experience can at once "spot" a camp or castle by the appearance from a distance of a hill or headland; and the traveller in Devon and Cornwall will pass scores of them, as he will see by his Ordnance Survey Map, without giving much attention to them, without supposing that they can be of great interest, unless his attention has been previously directed to the subject. It is a pity that anyone should go through a country which may really be said to make ancient camps and castles its speciality and not know something about them.

Of hill castles or camps there are several kinds:—

I. Those that are rectangular or approximately so, and which have been attributed to the Romans. Of these in Cornwall there are but few. Tregear, near Bodmin, and Bossens, in S. Erth, have yielded Roman coins and relics of pottery; but whether actually Roman or Romano-British remains undecided.