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An Adulterine Castle on Faringdon Clump, Berkshire

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2012

E. T. Leeds
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Extract

From the market-place at Faringdon the Oxford road mounts steadily, passing under the north slope of the hill known variously as Faringdon Clump or Faringdon Folly. The hill is a rounded knoll, the summit of which stands 505 ft. O.D. and, besides being a well-known landmark in the Vale of White Horse, commands an extensive prospect in every direction. Like Cumnor Hurst, Shotover, Brill and others, it is one of a series of undenuded caps of Cretaceous sands overlying Berkshire oolites that crop out at intervals between Faringdon and Aylesbury. The sands are ferruginous, dark yellow with lighter sands below, divided by a layer of sandstone rock. On the summit of the hill is a clump of beeches and Scotch firs, probably planted here, as on so many similar eminences, in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Antiquaries Journal , Volume 16 , Issue 2 , April 1936 , pp. 165 - 178
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1936

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References

page 171 note 1 V.C.H. Berks, iv, 489.

page 172 note 1 The quotation in du Cange under Gaiola is apposite to the present inquiry, indicating that castle and gaiola go together. Charta Henrici Regis Anglorum, Tom. 3, Hist. Harcur, p. 151: ‘Sciant me reddidisse et praesenti carta confirmasse Balduco…servienti meo…custodiam Gaiolae meae Rothomagensis et portae castelli mei; et pro ista custodia habet unoquoque die duorum solidorum usualis monetae in meo redditu vicecomitatus mei Rothomagensis, pro custodia Gaiolae meae decem et octo denarios, et pro custodia portae sex denarios.’

page 173 note 1 This statement is misleading. The word ‘castellum’ does not occur. The passage in Ann. Mon. i, 26 speaks of ‘saisinam de Ferendune’, and that in ii, 254 of ‘regium castrum’. ‘Castrum’ is defined by du Cange as villa or une terre, and is evidently synonymous with the manerium cited below. King John's gift has, therefore, no connexion with the castle.

page 173 note 2 iv, 489.

page 174 note 1 The evidence from Kidwelly does not seem very convincing. Even Mr. Radford admits that the cooking-pot layer found at the foot of the rampart opposite the wall of the inner ward could have belonged to the builders of the ward. In the section (Archaeologia, lxxxiii, 110, fig. 3, Section II), although covered by a layer of builders' mortar, it is on the same level as another layer of mortar lying immediately at the ground-level of the wall of the ward, and that cannot have been deposited before the building began.

page 175 note 1 Arch. Journ. iii, 62. This association is often cited, but in reality has little worth. The old wells and pits in Oxford produce a very varied assortment of material, and even the coin found inside one of the pitchers merely gives a possible, not an absolute, terminus post quem for the pitchers, but not therefore for all glazed wares.