and flow across broad and marshy tracts of land to unite below Christchurch in a spacious inlet of the bay which is formed, and on the south-east protected, by the headland bearing the suggestive name of Hengistbury. The position is thus strong and convenient: unapproachable, by reason of the marshes, on the east and west; presenting to the north a narrow and defencible front, and placed upon a harbour in former days very suitable for small vessels, sheltered from the prevailing west wind, and having a narrow and easily-guarded entrance from the adjacent channel. Such a position was not likely to be neglected by any people, even in the rudest age, and accordingly the Britons seem to have fortified the headland: and those who drove them out not only gave to that headland its present name, but, finding the inner position better suited to their habits, fortified it with bank and ditch, and within the area so enclosed threw up the usual mound, or burh, the ordinary indication of the residence of an early English chieftain.

The remains of the British period are confined to the double banks and ditches, which still crown the headland, and to the names of the rivers, which there unite. Of a British town or church, Aberdour, as such would have probably been called, no traces are to be found.

The earliest mention of the place in Anglo-Saxon records is in the Chronicle in a.d. 901, where it is recorded, that on the death of Alfred and the succession of Edward the Elder, Æthelwold, his uncle’s son, seized the vill at “Winburne and that at Tweoxneam,” but on Edward’s marching to Badbury, and threatening an attack on Winburne, now Wimborne, he fled into the North. This statement is repeated by Florence of Worcester, with the additional information that Tweoxneam was a royal vill. The place, under its better-known name of Twyneham, occurs in a charter by Athelstan, dated April 23rd, 939, in which, among other lands, he, the “king wielding all Britain,” gives to God and St. Mary, to St. Michael, St. Sampson, and St. Branwaladre, lands on Avene at Twynham. The character of a royal vill was long sustained, and from Domesday it appears that it had belonged to the Confessor and did then belong to King William. Long before that time, however, a religious house had been founded there, and the canons of Tuinham, or of the Holy Trinity of Thuinam, appear in the Survey as tenants-in-chief. The foundation was probably an early one. Twynburn, or Winburn, on the same Stour a few miles higher up, was founded before 705, and Wareham before 876. In the Confessor’s time, there were twenty-four canons and a dean; and in the reign of Rufus, the latter post was filled by Ralf Flambard, who is said to have rebuilt the college, which was practically re-founded by Richard de Redvers, Earl of Devon, in the reign of Henry I., and whose son, Earl Baldwin, obtained the conversion of the seculars into regular canons of the order of St. Augustin. The mill is recorded in Domesday. In all these transactions there is no mention of the castle.

THE CASTLE OF CHRISTCHURCH.

The castle, however, though possibly not a structure in regular masonry until a century later than the Conquest, was certainly a burh long before that event, and probably at least as early as the ninth century, preceding, no doubt, and being the cause of, the vill, or collection of houses. It stands upon the right or west bank of the Avon river, immediately below the ancient bridge which carries the high road across it. Its eastern front stands about 16 yards from the river, and rises out of, and forms, the bank of the Mill Leat, which intervenes between the castle and the Avon. The leat commences about three quarters of a mile higher up, and terminates at the ancient Priory Mill, now called “Place Mill,” 500 yards lower down, where, having started from the Avon, it falls into the Stour. As there seems to have been but one mill, it is to be supposed that the lay and spiritual lords were in accord upon the very interesting topic of multures. At any rate, it lay with the former to cut off the supply of water.

The area of the castle was roughly rectangular, about 110 yards north and south, or parallel to the river, and 150 yards east and west,—dimensions which include the ditch, now filled up, but of which there are indications, with a breadth of 20 yards, along the north and west fronts, now Castle and Church streets. The line of the ditch along the south, or Priory, side is not traceable. The old Priory wall is wanting there, and the ground has been levelled and cultivated as a garden for above a century. Probably the ditch communicated at each end with the mill-stream, and was filled from it, involving at the deepest part not above 12 feet to 15 feet of excavation. No doubt there was a bank within the ditch, thrown up from it, and which has since been employed to fill it up. On the water front no earthworks were necessary. The leat is 25 feet broad, and the river expands suddenly below the bridge to 130 feet in width.

In the highest and north-western quarter of the space thus enclosed is the burh, attributed by Norden, with great probability, to Edward the Elder, after the suppression of the rebellion of Æthelwald in 901. This is an oblong mound, wholly artificial, and composed of chalk-gravel. It measures about 160 feet north and south by 150 feet east and west, and has a table summit about 120 feet by 90 feet; it is about 20 feet high. This mound and base court, with the circumscribing bank and ditch, and the watercourse, with, no doubt, a strong palisade, formed the original fortress, which, side by side with the Priory, afforded to the contiguous town temporal and spiritual protection. Here, upon the old site, Richard de Redvers, having before obtained a grant of the manor from Henry I., erected a castle such as was then in use. He walled in the area, placing probably his curtain along the crest of the bank and upon the edge of the mill leat. His keep he built upon the mound, and the hall and domestic buildings upon the line of the wall, along the edge of the water. He is said also to have walled the town. The masonry remaining is but scanty and confined to some fragments of the keep and the hall-house, both of which appear to be original.

The keep is peculiar both in position and in its details. It is, or has been, rectangular, and it stands upon the summit of the mound. It is very unusual, for obvious reasons, to find rectangular keeps placed upon artificial earthworks. At Guildford, where this appears to be the case, it is only partially so, the tower being built on the slope of the mound so that at least one half of it descends to the solid. It is, no doubt, possible that here, the mound being of but moderate height, the foundations may be laid below it; but more probably this is not the case, and the engineer trusted, and securely, to the immense breadth of his masonry to spread the weight and thus avoid unequal settlement. Usually, when keeps are erected on artificial mounds, they are of the shell type, as at Arundel.