ANCIENT EARTHWORKS Eardisley Castle base-court, roughly horseshoe-shaped, defended by a water moat. The long inclosure on the west was once defended with a moat and rampart on all sides, and between it and the mount is a singularly-shaped court. A farmhouse and buildings, erected in the base-court, have added to the destruction of the traces of the old work,and no masonry is visible. The water from the streams filled the moats efficiently, and now turns two mills, one on the north, the other on the south. We learn from Domesday that in the days of Edward the Confessor Eardisley (there spelt Herdeslege) was in the hands of Earl Edwin, and at the period of the Survey was one of the estates of the Norman Roger de Laci. No castle is referred to, but una domus defensabilis (a house capable of defence) is mentioned. No antiquary viewing the earthworks, especially the odd shape of the court west of the mount, can doubt that the whole castrametation has been altered, and that probably a mount stronghold with its attached horseshoe-shaped court has been dumped upon or within an earlier work. It is probable that the domus defensabilis occupied an earlier work, the mount and court structure being erected subsequently to the period of Domesday (1086). A paper on 'Eardisley and its Castle,' written by the Rev. R. Hyett Warner, appeared in the 'Transactions of the Woolhope Field Club.'- Edvin Ralph. — This stronghold, which we must include in Class E, though its present condition hardly warrants so doing, is situated under 2 miles north-north-west of Bromyard, upon ground about 520 ft. above sea level, with no great variation in the heights of the land round. The position has no natural defence, except that the ground is inclined to be swampy. The entrenchments are not in a perfect state of preservation, but appear to have con-
sisted of a mount, and one or more large in-
closures. The mount is of small size, and is practically not raised above the natural level; possibly the ditch was once much deeper, and contained a larger quantity of water than now. Upon the north and north-west are traces of moating, apparently forming a court or two courts, as at Kingsland, i2| miles west-by-north, but the exact form is not easy to determine. EwYAs Harold Castle. — This earth- work is situated 10 miles south-west of Edvin Ralph Castle Hereford, and Stands upon a tongue of land " See Trans. Woolhope Field Club (1902-4), 256. 237 + Church SCALC or rCET 100 100 300
