FURTHER REMARKS BY T. V. HOLMES.
69
a few yards above the level of the flat, it cannot be an ordinary
farm ditch. To me it is evidence that it is one ; for while
nature gives a more or less curved line to boundaries of a geological
kind, farmers tend to straight lines in their hedges and ditches.
Thus the two seldom coincide for more than a very short distance.
On the other hand, a ditch for defensive purposes would naturally
have been made to keep to the border of the alluvium, in order to
be uniformly full of water, would have been very broad, and would
have had an earthen rampart on its inner edge, consisting of
material thrown up out of the ditch.
My inference from the absence of any mention of this Harlow
hill in the "Gentleman's Magazine Library," is simply that the
learned editor of that useful series of volumes has not thought its
archaeological interest sufficiently well-established. For an antiquary
of 1821 was capable de tout in questions of this kind, and ready to
jump at any conclusions. Consequently, I should not have thought
the matter worth writing about had not an accomplished archae-
ologist like Mr. Gould adopted similar views in 1894. I cannot
see the slightest evidence that this Harlow hill was ever fortified
by earthworks. The surface of the hill presents perfectly natural
contours, which have never been modified artificially. The foun-
dations of walls were, I think, simply those of farm buildings, as,
had they belonged to a fortress, the fosse and other earthworks
would have remained when the walls were removed to make others
elsewhere, just as in the case of so many ancient castles whose
sites are now marked mainly by their earthworks, as at Stansted
Mountfitchet.
Mr. Gould appears to object to a comparison between this
supposed earthwork at Harlow and the unquestionable one at
Bishop's Stortford. But, surely, as the two both arise from the
alluvial flat of the same river, and are only six miles apart, no test
can be fairer or more decisive. And I think that any visitor to
them cannot fail to recognise the fact that their differences are not
of degree but of kind. And that what the one is the other is not.
The question of water supply to the Harlow hill is quite a
subordinate one. It is almost certain that a specially good and
commanding site would be occupied by an ancient earthwork, even
though the water supply might be indifferent or precarious. But
the Harlow hill offers no advantages of position and height. As
regards its water supply there would, of course, be no difficulty in