At the very threshold of the inquiry a marked difference is noticed: the pre-Roman earthworks contained no building material to entice the churchmen within their boundaries. Turning to individual examples, we find a most instructive case at Knowlton or Knollton, Dorsetshire, four miles south-west of Cranborne. Here, a ruined church built by Norman labour, though not necessarily representing the first church reared on the spot, stands within a round British earthwork ([Fig. 4]). The ditch, or fosse, of the enclosure is situated on the inner side, as in the renowned earthwork at Avebury, Wiltshire. The Saxon church at Avebury dates in the main, perhaps, from the early tenth century, and stands just outside the vallum. Some writers have inferred, from the presence of the inner fosse, that these enclosures had religious, or, at least, sepulchral associations. The Knowlton earthwork is one of a group, and close by is a cluster of ancient, storm-beaten yews[48]. Such a collocation, as will be seen in Chapter IX., is not without significance.
Fig. 4. Ruins of Knowlton Church, Dorset, standing within an ancient earthwork.
Another dilapidated chapel, now used as a barn, is situated within the oval camp of Chisbury, near Great Bedwyn, Wiltshire. This earthwork, which has double, and in some parts treble, lines of trenches, is described by Sir R. Colt Hoare as one of the finest specimens of castrametation in England. One rampart is 45 feet in height. The existing ruins represent a Decorated fabric which was dedicated to St Martin, but Mr A. H. Allcroft, in his Earthwork of England, suggests that a church was erected here after the drawn battle between Wessex and Mercia in A.D. 675. On the hill above Standish Church, Gloucestershire, is a somewhat notable camp. Although it is said that the ditches were deepened during the Civil War, and although Roman coins have been dug up in large numbers[49], it is conceived that the camp was originally British. On the height just above Gunwalloe Church, Cornwall, is a “cliff castle”—one belonging to the Group A, as defined by the Congress of Archaeological Societies in 1903[50]. Such earthworks are inaccessible along a portion of their boundaries, on account of the presence of cliffs or water. The site of the church of St Dennis, also in Cornwall, is associated with a “hill castle[51],” which is assigned to the Group B. In this class, the earthwork follows the contour of the hill. Another contoured camp, much disturbed and defaced, is situated on St Anne’s Hill, near Midhurst Church, Sussex[52], while a small circular fortification may be seen to the west of the churchyard of South Moreton, Berkshire[53]. Coldred Church, Kent, was built actually within a fortress, conjecturally of Romano-British date[54], though the elevation of the earthwork is rather exceptional for that period, being about 370 feet above the sea-level, and 50 feet above the valley towards the west. Again, at Kenardington, also in Kent, an earthwork of unknown age, now much mutilated[55], surrounded the graveyard and part of the neighbouring fields.
The so-called Dane’s Camp (Group B) at Cholesbury, Bucks., 600 feet above the sea-level, encircles the church of St Lawrence with its embankment[56]. Another St Lawrence, at West Wycombe, in the same county, is built inside a ring earthwork (Group B), which crowns the hill. This fort, probably of British construction, is remarkable for its double-terraced defences, and for the manner in which it commands three converging valleys[57]. A somewhat similar example was once visible at Brownsover, near Rugby, where, a century ago, the church and village were enclosed within elaborate entrenchments. These represented a fortress, constructed on a ridge which overlooked the valleys of the Avon and the Swift. The fort was probably prehistoric, although a cinerary urn, found in the churchyard, was identified as Roman.
The hill-village of Burpham, in Sussex, is clustered near an oblong promontory fort (Class A) constructed on a tongue of land, around which a loop is formed by the river Arun. A gigantic vallum and exterior fosse cross the neck of the peninsula. The early Norman church of the village stands but a few yards beyond an entrance breach in the northern rampart. Mr A. H. Allcroft, pursuing the “method of exhaustions,” declares the earthwork to be Danish, and Mr P. M. Johnston suggests that the church occupies a pagan site. At all events the juxtaposition can hardly be considered casual.
Immediately to the east of Hathersage churchyard, Derbyshire, may be seen a simple circular earthwork, consisting of a high rampart with a moat outside. It is classed by Dr J. C. Cox in the division C of the scheme above-mentioned[58], namely, the division which embraces round enclosures of a defensive character. An analogous earthwork adjoins the churchyard of Tissington, also in Derbyshire[59].
Without pursuing this quest further, one or two pitfalls must be pointed out. Entrenchments found near a parish church may sometimes represent portions of the “ring fence” of a Mediaeval settlement; and the banks, which once bore a hedge or palisade, might be hastily ascribed to an earlier period. Mr Allcroft, in the work just mentioned, cites numerous warning examples. Again, banks of boulder clay or glacial drift may assume a false appearance of ridging, as if due to the work of man. To glacial action I venture to assign the surface irregularities near Ludborough Church, Lincolnshire, though they may represent the partially erased banks of the Mediaeval village. Close by the neighbouring churchyard of St Lawrence at Fulstow, one sees similar unevenness of the ground, the most important hillock being perhaps a grave wherein were buried some sixscore parishioners who died of the sweating sickness in the early seventeenth century. Once more, the traces of earthwork, military or agricultural, below the church of St Michael, on Glastonbury Tor, Somerset, may not be very ancient, and I should not connect them in any manner with any ideas which were held by the Gothic architects.
We next inquire why churches should have been built in situations such as those which we have been considering. Mr Allcroft, arguing apparently from the assumption that the church was a defensive building—in fact, almost the only one in the parish—considers that it was sometimes built near earthworks for additional security[60]. That Mr Allcroft’s premises are sound, I shall attempt to show in the next chapter. That, in exceptional cases, his conclusion is correct, one would not care to deny. But can the theory be of general application? Scattered throughout the land are churches built in exposed and lofty situations, so that traditions, varying in detail, but related in their main principle, have sprung up to account for the choice of these isolated and inconvenient positions. Most of the stories put fairies, or, more commonly, the Spirit of Evil, in opposition to the efforts of the builders. Churches were moved in a night, or the day’s work was undone by the malignant foes. In cases of this kind, as in those instances where churches stand in some secluded meadow, the reason may occasionally be found in the churlishness of the manorial lord, or in the fact that the village settlement has shifted since the church was built. Houses are demolished and rebuilt, but the church remains. The desire to place the church in an impregnable spot may more frequently account for the hill-structures, which will be considered in Chapter III., though not for the churches near earthworks, nor for the sequestered churches in the fields. Some other explanation must be sought, and, curiously enough, Mr Allcroft has incidentally suggested two other theories. The early missionaries to the pagan Saxons, he supposes, made their headquarters on deserted Roman sites, first, to demonstrate their own power in successfully defying the evil spirits which haunted those spots, and secondly, through the bad reputation of these earthworks, to obtain “something of a guarantee against molestation by human beings quite as formidable[61].” While not agreeing that the second motive would be very influential, with the first suggestion I find myself more in harmony. The miraculous power of withstanding devils and demons would not be without its effect on the ignorant. Moreover, the claim would be as effective during the Mediaeval as it was during the Saxon period. For we are not to suppose that superstition fled the land on the advent of the Normans. Who were these new folk, and what were their antecedents, that they should be free from slavish fears of the unknown? Legends were without doubt attached to prehistoric remains down to a late date; how intense and how gross are the superstitions of country folk even in our own day, only the close student of men and books can be aware. Thus, for some reason, inexplicable, except on anthropological grounds, there exists among the Lincolnshire woldsmen a prejudice in favour of burial on the heights, and many similar facts could be given.