A HISTORY OF WARWICKSHIRE disappeared upon the south side of the enclosure, but on the west there is a long and deep ditch running in a straight line in a south-westerly direction from near the mount. Further west there are remains of other moats and terraces, and traces of fortifications are to be seen almost as far as the water-mill beside the road below ; there are also arti- ficial terraces in the field to the east of the rectangular court. Alto- gether, the works accompanying the mount appear to have been very extensive ; but they have become so worn, and also been apparently so much altered by man in former years, that their original plan is not now easily discernible. Dugdale, two hundred and fifty years ago, speaks of ' vestigia ' of the castle only being visible in his day. There are no traces of ancient masonry either upon the mount or the ramparts ; their palisades were evidently therefore of wood, which has long since dis- appeared. A few old bricks upon the top of the mount are the relics of a monument erected there by one of the Bridgemans in the last century. This mount has often been described as a sepulchral tumulus, and the earthworks adjoining it as Roman ; of course either might have been made use of by later designers of the existing mount and court fort, but excavation would be necessary to substantiate the assertion. As at Brinklow and at Seckington, no mediaeval structure of masonry was ever erected on the site of the stockaded fortress of the Norman Lords ' del Chastel de Bromwyz.' l CHESTERTON (4 miles south-east of Leamington). One and a third miles north-west of the church in this parish, and on the line of the ancient Fosse Way, which cuts through it, is a worn entrenchment known locally as the Roman Camp. These earthworks are in a little valley formed by the course of the Chesterton brook, on the right bank of which they are situated ; the spot is sheltered by low encircling hills. In shape the camp is roughly oblong, with an interior area of about 8 acres ; it lies almost north-west by south-east ; the corners at the east and south are slightly rounded rectangles, while those at the north and west are acute and obtuse angles respectively, owing to the north-east rampart being longer than that to the t south-west. This irregularity in construction is presumably caused by the formation of the ground ; the makers of the camp appear to have chosen the slight elevation in the course of the Fosse Way across the valley as an advantageous position for their purpose, but the brook running close by has obliged them to cut away a portion of the oblong upon the west side. The entrenchments now consist only of wide and imposing looking ditches ; and even these are more or less obliterated in parts, notably at the west corner and along the south-east side ; in some places the ditches measure as much as 140 feet across the top, and are only from 9 to 1 2 feet deep, but there is no doubt that their appearance has been materially altered by the levelling action of the plough, which has steadily widened them at the top and at the same time filled them ' Dugdale's Warm, p. 620 ; Chattock's Antiquities (1884), pp. 205, 287-9 5 Burgess in B'ham. and Mid. Inst. Arch. Trent. (1872), p. 88, and in Brit. Arch. Assoc. Journ. (1873), pp. 39-42. 366
