BATTLEMENTS SHOWN IN HARL. MS. 603. (An Anglo-Saxon MS. of the Psalms.)
Ida "wrought a burh" at Taunton (before 721), and Alfred built many burhs against the Danes. His son, Edward the Elder, and Ethelfleda, the Lady of the Mercians, were yet more energetic in raising these defences. To Edward the burh at Witham, now unfortunately in process of demolition, and also that at Maldon are attributed, while Ethelfleda was responsible for those at Stafford and Tamworth in 913, and at Warwick in 914. In the absence of rebutting evidence we are undoubtedly justified in assuming that these burhs were simply replicas of the conjectured method of fortification pursued by the Saxons; the belief is strengthened by the remains at Maldon and Witham, where wide rectangular enclosures are found surrounded by earthen ramparts and external fosses.
A difficulty, however, arises when we consider the two burhs erected at Nottingham. No rectangular enclosures have been discovered there, and it seems probable that the word simply signifies that two forts were erected to protect the bridge which passed over the Trent at this point, similar perhaps to the mounds of earth at Bakewell and Towcester, which are supposed to date from the same period.
The genius of the Saxons appears to have been adapted to field warfare rather than to the construction or maintenance of strong military stations, for we find that when defeated they took refuge in natural fastnesses rather than in fortresses; the woods and marshes of Somerset, for example, protected Alfred from the pursuit by the Danes, and the last stand of these people against the Normans occurred in the fens and marshes about Ely. There is no account extant of a protracted resistance afforded by a Saxon fortress; that of London against the Danes may be attributed to the massive Roman walls there.
It is unsatisfactory to be compelled to wander thus in the realms of conjecture, but it is probable that the kinds of defence varied in different places, since at Worcester Edward surrounded an ancient borough with a wall of stone. An oblique light, however, is thrown upon the subject by the presence in England of a few undoubted examples of fortifications erected at definite dates by another northern race, i.e. the Danes, who might be expected to fortify themselves somewhat similarly to the Saxons.
