ANCIENT EARTHWORKS ' The Buries,' Repton, long thought to be Roman, has also been included in this class, though with some hesitation. The moated homestead sites of Class F are not nearly so numerous in Derbyshire as in the neighbouring Palatinate of Chester and in most of the counties of eastern and southern England. This paucity of examples doubtless arises from so large a proportion of its limited area being rocky and mountainous, and altogether unsuited to trenchwork defence of this character. Nevertheless an interesting and diversified number of moated sites are to be found in the southern and western parts of the shire. Twenty-five instances are briefly described, and plans given of the more remarkable. These are all the cases which were sufficiently well defined to attract the attention of the Ordnance surveyors, though there are several remains of moat indications round other manor houses or their sites. Several well-defined rectangular moats have been filled up in the course of agricultural and farm improvements during the past forty years, as at Hollington in Brailsford parish, and at Lullington in the far south of the county. It may well be supposed that in some cases included under homestead moats there may have been a pre-Conquest, or even possibly a pre-historic, origin for such earthworks, but their construction is said to have been continued until as late as the days of Elizabeth ; all that is implied by inclusion in this class is that the evidence is almost conclusive that the moat in question once surrounded a dwelling-house, farmstead, or stackyard. The oval-shaped moat seems as a rule to betoken an earlier date than those of rect- angular formation. The Cubley example, an irregular oval, is certainly of old origin, and the oval one at Duncourt Farm is probably still older. The fragment of the moat at Stainsby Hall is sufficient to show that it was of oval or circular shape. In several counties, where there is a rich depth of earth and con- siderable paucity of stone, as in Bedfordshire and the East Riding of Yorkshire, the precincts of monastic sites were protected by moats and earthen ramparts, the latter being doubtless stockaded. Derbyshire had but few religious houses, and these mostly where stone was plentiful ; but there are two examples of this style of enclosure on a small scale of religious sites, one at the Preceptory of the Knights Hospitallers at Yeaveley, and the other in Old Duffield round a grange of Darley Abbey. THE GREY DITCH Other counties, such as Essex and Cambridge on the east, or Dorset and Wilts on the west, have far more important dykes or defensive lines of entrenchment than Derbyshire, but the Grey Ditch is not without its interest. It shows itself plainly when traversing at right angles the high road in the valley from Brough to Brad well, telling probably of early tribal resistance to onslaughts up this valley. Just after passing ' Eden Tree,' the Grey Ditch (x. 9, 10) may be noticed on the right-hand side of the road, climbing up the gradual ascent toward Mich Low. Here it 359
