Page:Medieval Military Architecture in England (volume 1).djvu/247

Berkeley Castle, Gloucestershire. 229 ford, Ludlow, Wigmore, Richard's Castle, Cleobury, Brampton, Bishop's Castle, and Clun, either places of great strength, or held by powerful barons ; others, as St. Briavels, Wilton, Penyard, Weobly, Croft, Clifford, Whitney, Eardisley, Huntington, Lingen, Hopton, de Botwood, Stoke-Say, or Wattlesborough, either fortified houses or castles of smaller area and inferior strength. Upon the line of the Severn, in the rear of all these, there were but eight of any importance, Bristol, Berkeley, Gloucester, Hanley, Worcester, Hartle- bury, Bridgenorth and Shrewsbury, and of these Berkeley was in many respects the most remarkable, and has endured the longest. The other castles are either ruins or have altogether been swept away. Of Bristol there remains only a portion of a crypt. Gloucester, Hanley, and Worcester are gone. Of Bridgenorth a part of the keep is all that is seen ; and of Shrewsbury a fragment of a Norman gate- house, the much-altered walls of the hall, and, older than all, the mound that gave character to the whole. Berkeley, on the other hand, has been inhabited from its foundation to the present day. With one temporary alienation to the Crown, it has always been in one family, and it is as little altered as is consistent with modern usages and modes of life. The castle, church, and borough town of Berkeley, contained within the hundred to which they give name, are placed upon the southern extremity of a tract of ground which rises about 50 feet above the meadows to the south and west, and the drainage whence is carried on by the channel of the Little Avon, which falls into the Pill or Creek of Berkeley, and so reaches the Severn, here expanding into an estuary, the southern shore of which is about two miles distant from the castle. The castle stands upon the southern extremity of the high ground. A few yards to its north is the parish church with its detached tower, and again a little to the north is the town, which has grown up under the protection of its lordly neigh- bour. A deep and wholly artificial ditch intervenes between the churchyard and the castle, crossing the high ground, and cutting off and isolating the latter, of which it protects the northern and western faces. These, to the south and east, are made secure by the natural declivity, scarped and rendered steeper by art. The meadows out of which the castle hill rises, being but little above the adjacent Severn, were formerly an extensive and almost impassable morass, adding much to the strength of the place. Under the skill and labour of centuries, they have become grass-lands of great beauty and fertility, and form a charming foreground to the castle. Beyond, are elms and oaks often of great magnitude, disposed in frequent hedgerows, and in the distance to the west are the Welsh mountains, and to the east the nearer scarp of the Cotteswold, here and there covered with thriving plantations. Town and castle stand geologically upon the Old Red Sandstone, which, a very few yards to the east, is succeeded by the Ludlow rocks, which are again covered up by the marls of the Lias and New Red, and towards the Cotteswold by the Lower Oolite.