As is well known to students of English history the Norman influence began to prevail in this country some time anterior to 1066. The court of Edward the Confessor owned a fairly large proportion of Normans, the sympathies of that monarch being strongly in their favour. They obtained from him grants of estates in return for feudal duties, and, the Welsh being at that time a source of annoyance, some of the land so allocated was situated on the borderland.
So far as is known, the earliest castle to be erected by a Norman in that locality was built by Richard Fitz-Scrob, c. 1050. Richard's Castle, as it is termed, stands in the northern part of Herefordshire; a second example was thrown up at Hereford, and a third at the southern entrance to the Golden Valley. If we may trust contemporary documents a similar work was erected about the same time at Clavering Castle in Essex by a Saxon native of the county, Swegen the Sheriff, and also, probably, the castle at Dover, which appears to have been in existence prior to the Battle of Hastings. Of this little group of pre-Conquest castles the strongest was conjecturally that at Hereford, erected in 1055 by Harold, Earl of the West Saxons, consisting of a Motte and Bailey similar to the rest, but only a small portion of the bailey remains at the present time, as the mound has been removed and the ditch filled up.
As regards the construction of a castle of the Motte and Bailey type, it was commenced by the excavation of a deep ditch enclosing, as a rule, a circular space. There are a few exceptions which approximate to the oval, and the oblong form is not unknown. The whole of the ballast excavated was thrown up inside the ring until a high mound, flattened at the top, and with sides as steep as the "angle of repose" of the excavated material would allow, had been formed. The last portions of the superincumbent earth thrown up were consolidated by ramming. Around the edge of the area upon the summit of the mound a breastwork of timber was placed, either of thick vertical planks driven deeply into the soil and firmly strengthened behind, or of timber and stone as previously described in connection with fortified hill-tops (Chap. II.).
Upon the summit and occupying the centre, as a rule, a wooden castle was erected known as the "bretasche," and varying in size and accommodation according to the available space. We may safely infer that the height of the bretasche was not less than two stories, and this, added to the elevation of the mound which occasionally reached to 60 feet, would afford a coign of vantage for a view over the whole area below. Upon the outer edge of the fosse a vallum occurs in many examples, thus still further adding to the depth of the defence and giving increased height to the counterscarp; it also afforded a means for erecting a palisading of stakes if advisable. To afford ingress and egress to the fort a narrow flying bridge of wood was erected reaching from the top of the mound to the outer edge of the fosse.
