older than the Conquest, and part of its outer defences; but Corfe is a natural hill. It is well known that the English were from a remote period conversant with masonry, and constructed churches of stone or timber as suited them best; and nothing is more natural than that they should have employed the former where the object was to resist an attack. But upon a burh, or upon an artificial earthwork of any height, masonry of any kind was obviously out of the question. Timber, and timber alone, would have been the proper material. Timber was always at hand, and it was a material of which, possibly from their early maritime habits, the English were very fond. Also the rapidity with which these burhs were constructed shows that timber must have been largely employed. They were thrown up, completed, attacked, burnt, and restored, all within a few months.
There are not wanting descriptions of these timber-defended works. M. de Caumont cites a curious passage from Ernaldus Nigellus, an author of the ninth century, who relates an expedition under Louis le Debonnaire against the Breton king, Marman, whose strongholds were protected by ditches and palisades.
"Est locus hinc silvis, hinc flumine cinctus amoeno.
Sepibus et sulcis atque palude situs."
Intus opima domus …
This however was a Breton work, and there is no mention of a mound. Two centuries later the mound was in general use, and another quotation, taken also from M. de Caumont, from the life of John, a canonised prelate of the church of Terouane, by Archdeacon Colmier, gives an account of the fortress of Merchen, near Dixmude, in which the material employed and the mode of construction are clearly set forth. The original, taken from the "Acta Sanctorum," is appended to this paper, and is in truth a description of a moated mound, with its fence and turrets of timber, its central dwelling, and the bridge across the ditch rising to the top of the mound. The description is illustrated by the representation of the taking of Dinan, in the Bayeux tapestry. There is seen the conical mound surmounted by a timber building, which two men with torches are attempting to set on fire, while others are ascending by a steep bridge which spans the moat, and rises to a gateway on the crest of the mound.
Many of these mounds under the name of motes (motae) retained their timber defences to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and that too on the Shropshire and Welsh border, crowded with castles of masonry.
