152 NOTES ON ANCIENT DEFENSIVE EARTHWORKS.
ments on the edge of a tract of high ground. In Murray's
Handbook to the Eastern Counties we are informed that "the castle
was founded within the lines of a Roman entrenchment, near
which urns and other antiquities have been found." At the pre-
sent day Pleshey seems to be a singularly out-of-the-way place.
But a glance at Norden's Map of Essex shows it very near the
old line of road from the neighbourhood of Chelmsford to, and
beyond Great Chesterford, and not far from the Roman road
from Writtle (Caesaromagus) to and beyond Braintree. Here,
again, the available evidence seems to point to a British origin
for these earthworks.
On the border of Hertfordshire and Essex stand the defen-
sive earthworks of Stansted Mountfitchet. They consist of a
mound surrounded by a rampart and ditch, connected by a
narrow neck of ground with a much larger enclosure of a horse-
shoe shape, and with other outworks. There are some signs of
masonry at the base of the rampart surrounding the keep mound,
but that surrounding the larger enclosure seems to consist wholly
of gravel belonging to the Glacial Drift, which, with the Chalk
on which it rests, make up the Castle hill. East of this outer
rampart is a large pit showing about 25ft. of gravel above Chalk,
this pit extending as far westward as the foot of the rampart.
The situation of this Castle is one of unusual natural strength
for Essex. South and west of it there is a natural valley, which
extends also to some extent northward, so as to give some
advantage on every side except the eastern, where the castle
promontory joins the drift-covered plateau of which the country
consists except where river valleys intervene. On the east,
accordingly, the rampart is higher and the ditch deeper than else-
where. The keep mound is slightly lower than the main out-
work. As it is on the western, or naturally strong side of the
Castle, there is no need for anything like the accumulation of
earth to be seen at Pleshey or Rayleigh. As regards the antiquity
of these earthworks, it appears to me that the natural strength
of the site, together with the fact that the word Stanstead implies
a site on a Roman road, gives a presumption in favour of British
rather than Saxon age.
We now come to Rayleigh. In south Essex, at Laindon
(or Langdon) hill, and about Rayleigh, we have two small tracts
of land unusually high for that part of the county. Geologically
they consist of outlying patches of Bagshot Beds lying above
London Clay, while here and there some high-level gravel rests