NOTES ON ANCIENT DEFENSIVE EARTHWORKS. 157
and Lymne. Of course, any practice adopted by the Britons of
East Kent would be more likely to be diffused among the tribes
living north of the Thames, but near the coast and the rivers,
than among those more removed from the great watery highway.
So I think that, so far as this piece of evidence goes, it also
points towards the conclusion that in the earthworks of Pleshey,
Stanstead Mountfitchet and Rayleigh we have British forts of
the advanced type shown in Caesar's Camp at Folkestone.7 But
the resemblances between them are best shown by means of the
ordnance map, that most impartial of authorities.
In addition, I add a plan from the ordnance map, on the
same scale, of Old Sarum, the well-known British Oppidum
which had a continuous existence as a town throughout the
Roman Occupation and down to the end of the thirteenth
Plans of Ancient Earthworks. From the Ordnance Survey
Maps. (Six inches=one mile).
A. Stansted Mountfitchet "Castle," Essex. (East of the hedge between
"a" and "b" is the gravel pit, which now extends as far as the "H"
in Castle Hill.
B. Caesar's Camp, Folkestone, Kent.
C. Rayleigh "Castle," Essex.
century. Of course, under the above circumstances, it is im-
possible to say to what period the inner mound or citadel belongs.
But it is evident that any resemblance between it and Rayleigh
is extremely slight compared with that between Rayleigh and
the presumably unmodified British camp at Folkestone.
The question may now present itself: Why was a site
favoured by nature and improved by primitive art as that of
7 On telling Mr. W. Cole that I had been writing the above remarks, he directed my
attention to a paper by Mr. H. Laver, on Rayleigh Mount (Trans Essex Arch. Soc., Vol. iv.,
Part III. (1892). I find, however, on reading Mr. Laver's paper that he has arrived at similar
conclusions by a different route.—T. V. H.