A HISTORY OF ESSEX BURES MOUNT. The parish has from early date been distinguished as Mount Bures, in contradistinction from the adjoining Bures St. Mary in Suffolk. The mount with its surrounding moat covers about an acre and a half, there are no distinct remains of outer works, and the fort seems to have consisted mainly of the defenced mount, which Gough considered the keep of a castle of the Sackvilles. The land to the west slopes rapidly to a brook, and on that side the moat has been partially destroyed by excavation for sand. On other sides the moat remains about 10 feet deep, the great mound rising 48 feet on the west and 38 feet on the east above the present level of the moat. CANFIELD (GREAT). All antiquaries may be thankful for the state of preservation in which the earthworks of Canfield Castle remain. Cteaf Canfie/tt. fssex. The work is second to none as an example of the methods of defence adopted in its construction a great mound of earth, no doubt origin- ally furnished with rings of wooden barrier defences, surrounded by a deep moat fed with water by the diversion of a little stream from its natural course, the mound still showing where one or more courses of palisading surrounded it, and showing too breaks in its ring, where probably approach and exit were effected by drawbridges ; 290
