[19] Wise’s Letter to Dr. Mead, “concerning some Antiquities in Berkshire,” ed. 1, pp. 25, 26.
[20] Wise’s Letter, p. 31.
CHAPTER IV.
“Well, here’s the Castle, you see,” said he, when we had walked a few hundred yards, and were come quite to the top of the hill.
“Where, Sir?” said I, staring about. I had half expected to see an old stone building with a moat, and round towers and battlements, and a great flag flying; and that the old gentleman would have walked across the drawbridge, and cried out, “What ho! warder!” and that we should have been waited upon at lunch by an old white-headed man in black velvet, with a silver chain, and keys round his waist. Somehow, the story of the battle, and all the talk about Pendragon and Arthur, coming upon the back of the farm-house, and the out of the way country life, which was so strange to me, had carried me into a sort of new world; and I shouldn’t have been much surprised to see a dragon running about the hill, though I should have been horribly frightened.
“I can’t make up my mind about this Castle,” he went on, without noticing me; “on two sides it looks like a regular Roman castrum, and Roman remains are found scattered about; but then the other sides are clearly not Roman. The best antiquaries who have noticed it call it Danish. On the whole, I think it must have been seized and occupied in succession by the lords of the country for the time being; and each successive occupier has left his mark more or less plainly. But, at any rate, you see it is a magnificent work.”
“Yes, Sir,” said I, “no doubt;” though I own I was a good deal disappointed. For what do you think the Castle is? Up at the very top of the hill, above the White Horse, there is a great flat space, about as big as Lincoln’s Inn Fields, only not the same shape, because it is only square on two sides. All round this space, there is a bank of earth, eight or ten feet high in some places, but lower at others. Then, outside, there is a great, broad, deep ditch; it must be twenty-five feet from the top of the inner bank to the bottom of the ditch; and outside that again, is another large bank of earth, from the foot of which the downs slope away on every side. But the banks and ditch are all grown over with turf, just like the rest of the downs, and there isn’t even a single stone, much less a tower, to be seen. There are three entrances cut through the double banks, one on the west, one on the southeast, and the third at the northeast side, which was the one through which we entered.
But if there were no warders and seneschals and drawbridges, there was plenty of life in the Castle. The whole place seemed full of men and women, and booths and beasts, and carts and long poles; and amongst them all were the Squire and Joe, and two or three farmers, who I afterwards found out were Committee-men, trying to get things into some sort of order. And a troublesome job they were having of it. All the ground was parcelled out for different purposes by the Committee, and such parts as were not wanted for the sports, were let at small rents to any one who wanted them. But nobody seemed to be satisfied with his lot. Here a big gypsy, who wouldn’t pay any rent at all, was settling his cart and family, and swinging his kettle, on a bit of ground, which the man who owned the pink-eyed lady had paid for. There a cheap-Jack was hustling a toyman from Wantage, and getting all his frontage towards the streets, (as they called the broad spaces which were to be kept clear for the people to walk along.) In another place, a licensed publican was taking the lot of a travelling showman into his skittle-alley. Then there were old women who had lost their donkeys and carts, and their tins of nuts and sacks of apples; and donkeys who had lost their old women, standing obstinately in the middle of the streets, and getting in everybody’s way; and all round, saws and axes and hammers were going, and booths and stalls were rising up.