Page:Medieval Military Architecture in England (volume 1).djvu/63

Castles of England at the Conquest. 47 were strong and well held against the Welsh is evident from the English names along and beyond the frontier. " Domes- day," however, though compiled after Earl Roger had held the Earldom of Shrewsbury about twelve years, only mentions four castles upon his border, — Oswestry, Montgomery, Shrewsbury, and Stanton or Castle Holgate, and the EarFs house at Quatford. Bridgenorth and Carreghova were built a few years later, in the reign of Rufus ; but Bridgenorth represented the burgh of ^thelflaeda, the remains of which are possibly seen at Oldbury, as are earthworks of still stronger type, actually employed by Earl Roger at Quatford. Besides these, Wattlesborough and Clun exhibit rectangular Norman keeps ; and eleven or twelve more castles in those districts are mentioned in records as early as the reign of Henry I. Altogether, by the close of the twelfth century there were from fifty to sixty castles in the county of Salop alone. Now, although the masonry of these castles, or of such of them as remain, can very rarely indeed be attributed to the Norman period, the earthworks show that they existed as fortresses long before that time ; and it seems, therefore, certain that here, as in other parts of England, Earl Roger and his barons made the most of such works as they found ready to their hands ; and this applies equally to the Palatinate of Chester and to the southern Marches, where also Norman castles took the place, with more or less of interval, of strongholds of the English type.