ARCHITECTURE ECCLESIASTICAL 125 tion of Christianity, there was a great veneration for wells, and the early missionaries took advantage of this to turn them into baptisteries, or in other ways to consecrate them. Holy wells abound in Cornwall, but they have not always much architectural character. That of Dupath, by Liskeard, is the finest, but there is also another that is fine at St Cleer, and one most interesting and unique at St Clether, where, indeed, there are two, for the water from the first flows into a chapel and is carried under the old stone altar, to decant into another well outside the chapel. The Madron Holy Well was for long famous for cures. 22. Architecture: (6) Military Castles. Before the Norman Conquest there were no masonry built castles in Cornwall, only stockades of wood sur- mounting earthworks or piled up masses of stone uncemented. The usual Saxon Eurh was a mound, surmounted by a structure of timber, reached by a bridge or ladder from a base-court that was encompassed by moat and mound and stockade. The Norman system of building a castle was to erect a round or square keep, a massive structure of stone, on the mound that had formerly been surmounted by a wooden structure, and to surround the base-court with a stone wall. Within this were erected the necessary domestic buildings. Very generally the entrance to the court was strongly defended by a second tower. The style of castle was greatly
