NOTES ON ANCIENT DEFENSIVE EARTHWORKS. 151
Another place in Norfolk at which a huge mound with mas-
sive outer earthworks exists is Castle Acre. There is, however,
more direct evidence as to antiquity in this case. For Mr.
Harrod discovered much Roman pottery when excavating on the
great mound, and Roman coins have been found in the outer
enclosure.2 And he thinks the enclosure south of the mound
and near the Church to be a Roman camp, somewhat irregular
in form from having been connected with earlier British entrench-
ments. Castle Acre, too, stands on the line of a very ancient
road known as the Peddar's Way, which crosses Norfolk from
a point near Brancaster to another three or four miles east of
Thetford. In short, the available evidence in this case favours
the view that at Castle Acre we have the remains of British and
Roman earthworks, and there is nothing tending to an opposite
conclusion.
I now come to the Suffolk and Essex border. On the
Suffolk side of the Stour is the little town of Clare, in the angle
between that stream and a little brook which flows into it from
the north. Here again is a huge mound connected with mas-
sive defensive outer earthworks, modern encroachments, as at
Castle Acre, obscuring the original plan. A few hundred yards
north of the great mound is a square camp, apparently Roman,
and probably owing its position there to the previous existence
of the British stronghold close by, on a decidedly more eligible
site—as at Norwich. In this case the Roman camp is neither so
closely connected with the British earthworks as at Castle Acre,
nor so far removed as at Norwich.
The earthworks of Thetford, Castle Acre and Clare all rise
from low ground. So do those of Great Canfield, about four
miles south-west of Dunmow, in Essex, where there is a large
moated mound connected with a massive horse-shoe shaped outer
entrenchment. There does not seem to be any evidence bearing
upon the antiquity of these Great Canfield earthworks. The
village has a Norman church, and is near an ancient line of road,
but there is nothing, so far as I am aware, tending to show that
the stronghold is British rather than Saxon, or the reverse.
In the grand earthworks of Pleshey we. have, on the other
hand, an evident choice of what is, for Essex, a naturally strong
position. Here there is a magnificent moated mound with a
horse-shoe shaped work southward, and extensive outer entrench-
2 See Murray's Handbook to the Eastern Counties, p. 283.