now reduced to three. The castle stands on the west side of, and just above, the channel by which the Adur reaches the sea at Shoreham. The pass thus commanded is four miles long, and half a mile wide; the bottom flat and marshy, the sides very steep and rising to 600 or 700 feet. New Shoreham, founded about a.d. 1200, by the Norman lord of Bramber, stands upon the seashore; but old Shoreham, the English port, is now half a mile inland, the deposits from the river and the débris of the chalk range having encroached considerably upon the sea. Combe and St. Botolph's, ancient parishes, are placed within the pass, and higher up upon the same side is the village of Bramber, standing upon slightly rising ground at the foot of the western hills, and upon the edge of a broad tract of level land, still wet, and formerly impracticable, across which the sluggish and frequently flooded Adur takes a rather winding course.
The castle is placed a little to the north-west of the village, and, as was the English custom, close to the parish church. From thence a raised causeway is carried across the valley, leading to the village of Sele or Beeding, the Bedinges of Domesday, where was once a religious house dependent upon the castle. The village, composed of one short street, adjoins the causeway, and near it was discovered, in 1839, the piling and piers in masonry of an ancient bridge by which the road was carried across one of the bye-streams of the Adur. A charter of 1075 refers to this bridge and to a chapel upon it, as "Stᵘˢ Petrus de veteri ponte." The causeway, however, claims to be of higher antiquity, and to have carried a Roman road across the marsh then probably flooded by the sea.
In the construction of the fortress, advantage was taken of a knoll of the lower or grey chalk, roughly oval in figure, and about 120 feet high above the river. This was levelled on the top and scarped round the sides so as to form a more or less rounded area, 560 feet north and south, by 280 feet east and west. The scarp descended above 180 feet at an angle of 45 feet, or a slope of one to one, into a ditch about 20 feet wide at the bottom, and the opposite side of which, or counterscarp, rose about 40 feet at a similar angle, so that the ditch at the counterscarp level was 100 feet broad, and the crest of the scarp rose 30 feet to 40 feet above the ground opposite. A very formidable defence. Towards the east, where the ground was low, the counterscarp was not above 20 feet high, and to add to the depth of the ditch, it was crested by a light bank, from which the ground sloped towards the marsh. On the north and north-west, where the ditch was at its deepest, and the ground was high, the slope outwards is gentle, falling off for a furlong or so. To the west, where there is a valley now occupied by the railway, the ground is low, and here the outer side of the ditch, forming the crest of the counterscarp, is a narrow ridge, as at Arques, succeeded by a very steep slope. Thus those who approached the place on that side, after toiling up a steep and dangerous ascent, would only find themselves on the outer edge of a deep ditch, with a second still higher and steeper ascent beyond it. Towards the south the
