A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE
averages 20 feet across, and is strong on all four sides. The eastern rampart has been mostly removed. The entrance appears to have been at the north-east angle close under a small circular mound on the rampart, rising a foot or two above it, and 20 feet across the top, which is edged all round by the root of a small bank which may have been the base of a stockaded tower. The fields to the south and east are scored with traces of other lines, where probably the rest of the station stood, but they are too faint to decipher. The ground slopes from east to west, so that the west end of the little fort rises considerably above the lower levels. It seems to have been a kind of projecting exterior keep. Its local name is 'Gannock's Castle' or 'The
Gannicks.' At the close of the campaign the place was stormed by the English with great slaughter of its defenders. It is very probable that this and other works of the kind became, later on, the site of defended homesteads, as they could easily have been adapted for the purpose.
(3) Willington.—Four miles nearer to Bedford, still on the south of the Ouse, there is another work with certain unusual features, which appear to mark it also as Danish. It stands on the old original bank of the river, which flows immediately beneath it. The former river bed lies between it and the northern original bank, half a mile across, and is wholly covered in times of flood. The site of the camp is a plain, and all the lines of entrenchment are dug out much on one level. There is an inner ward, an outer ward and a wide exterior enclosure.
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