8/27/2023 0 Comments Medieval town charter example![]() An English translation of 1610 described Marlborough as, The practice had an historical precedent in the Anglo-Saxon construction of a stockade on the summit of Silbury Hill around 1000 AD in response to the threat from marauding Danes.Ī medieval myth that King Arthur’s wizard Merlin lay buried under the Mound and that “Marlborough” really meant “Merlin’s barrow” continues to endure through the inscription on the Town Coat of Arms, “Ubi nunc sapientis ossa Merlini” or “Where are now the bones of the wise Merlin?” The myth was condemned by the famous schoolmaster-historian William Camden in his “Britannia” written in Latin in 1586. It would have made sense for the Normans to adapt an existing mound. Oxford and Wallingford are the nearest Norman castles with distinctive mottes. Ring works are far more common in Wiltshire than mottes. It would have made little sense for the Normans to construct a substantial motte on a low lying, difficult to defend site when better more easy to defend higher sites were available. Logic went against the theory that the Mound was built by the Normans. Roman coins and antler tines, though far from conclusive, do however suggest a pre-Roman construction date. It is not conclusive that the pieces originally made up antler-picks, which were Neolithic tools. Pieces of antler would not be unusual as nearby Savernake Forest was, in the medieval period, a royal hunting-ground for deer. The pieces of antler were identified as from red deer by the Natural History Museum in Kensington. The antiquarian, William Stukeley recorded the finding of Roman coins in it whilst it was landscaped with a spiral walkway as a huge garden feature in the 17th century. Archaeological evidence of any prehistoric origin is not robust: pieces of red deer antler were unearthed in its side in 1912 during the course of constructing a flue for a water-pumping engine housed at its base. There is, however, no documentary evidence of its existence before the Norman Conquest it does not appear in any Anglo-Saxon charter. The Mound would seem to be Marlborough’s primordial constructed feature. ![]() The Mound is close to the river Kennet and had a nearby spring which fed the moat built around it when it was used as the motte for Marlborough castle. Silbury Hill is close to the source of the river Kennet, is flanked by the Winterbourne stream, and is nearly surrounded by water during wet periods. Recent core-sampling has dated the monument to the third millennium BC making it contemporary with the much larger Silbury Hill 8km to the west. Seen most notably from the A4 behind the gap between the college chapel and the memorial hall, the Mound is an impressive and dominating feature. Apart from the Mound no trace of Marlborough castle survives today. A small inner bailey now occupied by college buildings and gardens lay south-east of it. It became the motte of a motte and bailey castle during the early medieval period with a curved shell keep with pilaster buttresses constructed on its summit. The Mound is in the shape of a truncated cone 83 m in diameter at its base, 31 m at its summit and just over 18 m high. ![]() Medieval Marlborough developed on the north side of the Kennet valley north east of an artificial feature known as the Mound, now within the grounds of Marlborough College. The Mound – Marlborough’s Primordial Feature
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