A HISTORY OF WARWICKSHIRE rather more than half way between the village of Tanworth and that of Solihull, is an ancient earthwork surrounded by a moat and called ' The Mount.' It is in a strong defensive position, on the top of a pro- jecting triangle of high ground in a corner made by the valley of the Blythe ; which stream, after running from north to south on its western side, turns off sharply to the east and protects it on the south. The remains consist of an oblong area encircled by a deep moat, on the inner side of which there is a strong earthen rampart ; the moat is square at its eastern and rounded at its western end. The works with their enclosure cover about a couple of acres. The moat is from 1 8 to 20 feet wide across the surface of the water that now lies within it ; the vallum is in places as much as 60 feet broad and 20 feet high. An unusual feature in connection with this stronghold is that parts of the interior area, instead of being higher, appear to be lower than the level of the water of the encircling moat. There are two entrances to the enclosure made by embankments across the moat and corresponding breaches in the rampart ; one is at the south-east and the other at the south-west. Mr. Burgess thought that there were traces of an outer enclosure or court abutting on the moat on its eastern side. 1 Nothing is known of the history of this ancient moated stronghold. Dugdale wrote that ' by the Forme of it and the Depth of its Trenches' it seemed to him to be a Roman work 2 ; but this is quite unlikely. In some ways it resembles the earthwork of uncertain age known as the ' Castle Hills ' at Fillongley. WAPPENBURV (4 miles north-east of Leamington.) This little village is situated close to the right bank of the river Leam, and about a mile to the west of the ancient Fosse Way. It was formerly well-nigh enclosed by extensive entrenchments surrounding an area roughly oblong in shape and about 20 acres in extent. The earthworks are now much denuded and also altered in form, and they have in places become almost indistinguishable. Their course is, or was, as follows : from the ford and stepping-stones across the river at the south-east of the village, along the right bank of the Leam in a straight line slightly south of west for a distance of 350 yards; at this point they take a north- westerly direction for nearly 200 yards, to a rounded corner, and then turn north and run in an almost direct but somewhat broken line for 300 yards as far as another corner which is almost a right angle ; from this they run directly east for over 250 yards, nearly up to the road by Wappenbury Hall, where all traces of them disappear. On the east side of the village no remains whatever are shown upon the 6-inch ordnance survey ; but in a plan made probably sixty or seventy years ago, and now preserved in Mr. Bloxam's copy of * Dugdale' in Rugby School library, a bank runs from north to south, at a distance of about a hundred yards east of the church, back to the stepping-stones, where it joins the southern rampart in a rounded corner. > Burgess in B'ham. and Mid. Inst. Arch. Trans. (1872), p. 87.
- Dugdale's Warw. p. 549.
400
