Post-Roman and English Earthworks. 19
feature, constituted a Burh. The burh was always fortified, and each inhabitant of the surrounding township was bound to aid in the repair of the works, almost always of timber, a material which the Saxons, like other German nations, appear usually to have preferred for building purposes to stone, though some of their towns were walled, as Colchester and Exeter, and Domesday records the custom of repairing the walls of Oxford, Cambridge, and Chester.
In these English, as before them in the British works, the ditches were sometimes used to contain and protect the approaches. This is well seen at Clun and Kilpeck. At Tutbury the main approach enters between two exterior platforms, and skirts the outer edge of the ditch, until it reaches the inner entrance. The object was to place the approach under the eyes and command of the garrison.
As there are still some archaeologists whose experience entitles their opinions to respect, who attribute these moated mounds to the Britons, it will be necessary to point out that the attribution of them to the English, though materially strengthened by the evidence of the works themselves, does not wholly, or even mainly, rest upon it. While the British camps are either præhistoric or unnoticed even in the earliest histories, and the age of the Roman works is only deducible from their plan and style, and from the known and limited period of the Roman stay in Britain, English works are continually mentioned in the chronicles, and the names of their founders and date of the construction of many of them are on record. Thus Taunton was founded by Ine a little before 721-2, when Queen Æthelburh destroyed it. The original earthworks still remaining are considerable, and formed part of the defences of a fortress erected long afterwards. In the ninth century, as the Danish incursions became more frequent, works of defence became more general, and are largely mentioned directly, or by implication, in the Anglo-Saxon chronicle. In 868-9, the Danish army was at Nottingham, a strong natural position, in which it was besieged by the West-Saxons. In 870, the Danes were a whole year at York and wintered at Thetford, where large earthworks remain. In 875 they were at Cambridge, and in 876 at Wareham, a West-Saxon fortress, whence they attacked Exeter, and at all these places are earthworks. In 878, we read that Alfred "wrought" a fortress at Æthelney, and in 885 the Danes laid siege to Rochester and "wrought" another fortress about their position, no doubt the great mound that still remains outside the castle and the Roman area. In 893, the Danes ascended four miles along the Limen or " Lymne " river in Kent, and thereC 2
