DOMESDAY SURVEY Roger dc Laci. Roger de Laci similarly held 4 carucates in the castellaria of Ewyas (Harold), in which Henry de Ferrers also had 32 acres. Lastly, Robert Gernon had 5 J hides in the castellaria of Richard's Castle (' Auretone '), a district which is not mentioned among the lands of that castle's lord."' Here we observe that Richard's Castle was surrounded (like Wigmore) by hidated land, while Ewyas (Harold) and Clifford, on the edge of the Welsh border were surrounded, like Caerleon, further west, by carucates, not by hides. Of late years it has been fully recognized that, while the positive evidence of Domesday as to the existence of a castle is of great value, its negative evidence counts for nothing. It is also now well established that the stronghold of which the distinctive feature was a great moated mound, intended to carry along its crest a wooden palisade, and usually provided with appurtenant earthworks forming a court or courts, was the type normally employed by the Normans for some time after the Conquest."' The evidence of extant Herefordshire earthworks in conjunction with that of the chroniclers and of the Domesday record have proved of the highest value in establishing this proposition and demolishing the theory enunciated by Mr. Clark," whom Mr. Freeman unfortunately followed, that they were far earlier than the Conquest. It can now be safely asserted that Richard's Castle and Ewyas Harold, which are of this type, were raised by Norman lords under the Confessor, while the latter was re-fortified by Earl William Fitz Osbern, who also raised at Wigmore a similar stronghold. That which he formed at Clifford was, it is true, different ; but it is equally recognized that when, as at Clifford, the Normans found ready to their hands a natural position of great strength, they had no need to raise a mound, and merely fortified what they found. In view of the important earthworks still extant at Kilpeck, and of the position occupied by its lord and his descendants, it is probable that, in spite of Domesday's silence, the castle there was already in existence. At Here- ford itself there was certainly a castle, which had a moated mound (wo/<3), though Domesday is silent on the subject. At Longtown also, where the Lacis placed their Ewias Castle, a mound preserves its site.^" Outside the county, though mentioned in its survey, was Caerleon, with its moated mound, and higher up on the Usk, Abergavenny, though nowhere mentioned, may, I suspect, have already possessed a castle on its extant mound, as a stronghold of a Herefordshire lord, Turstin the son of Rou." Before leaving the subject of castles one should note that at Clifford and Ewyas Harold we have specially good examples of the practice of Norman barons by which they assigned to their knightly tenants small estates around their own castles. We find this practice illustrated at Carisbrooke, the chief seat in the Isle of Wight of Earl William Fitz Osbern," and at Montacute Castle in Somerset. But it would be hard to find a better instance than that of the nine milites^ "* See note 5 above. " See the writer's ' Castles of the Conquest ' in Arch. Iviii, 3 1 3 at seq. " See his Med. Mil. Archit. passim. " This castle is of a special type. " 1 have shown in my Studies on Peerage and Family History that Turstin, who already held a great estate on both banks of the Usk, and may have been William de Scohies' tenant at Caerleon, was succeeded by the Ballon family, whose lordship of Abergavenny may possibly imply that this was Turstin's nameless lordship on the Usk. F.C.H. Hants, i, 408-9. I 273 35
