The masonry and details of the keep answer very well to the date of 1101 to 1102, to which history assigns it. It is certainly not earlier. The curtain of the inner ward was clearly of the same date, and enclosed a court in the north-west quarter of the general area, of which the keep probably formed the north-east angle, and which was entered on the east side close south of the keep. All else is gone; the “mighty North gate” of which Leland speaks is no more. The very ruins have perished, and the last trace of them, a good Norman arch, discovered while pulling down some houses in 1821, has since been destroyed by local Vandals. The early history of Bridgenorth is exceedingly obscure. It is stated in the Saxon Chronicle that when, in 896, Alfred stranded the Danish ships in the Essex Lea, the Danes left them, traversed England, passed the winter at Quatbridge on the Severn, and there threw up a work. Three of the four original texts are thus rendered. The fourth makes them rest at “Brygce,” or Bridge, on the Severn. Florence of Worcester supports Quatbridge, and mentions the work or fortress. “Brygce,” in the Chronicle, is thought to be an interpolation, both where appended to Quat, and where it stands alone, it being probable that the Severn was not bridged at that time. There are at present two parishes into the names of which Quat enters on the left bank of the river, below Bridgenorth, Quat and Quatford, and upon the river is Danesford. Quat is regarded by Eyton as a corruption of the British “Coed,” a wood, the whole district having been a forest. In the same Chronicle it is recorded that Æthelflæda, the great lady of the Mercians, a mighty burgh-builder in her day, and called by Henry of Huntingdon “Terror virgo virorum,” built, in 912, a burgh at Bricge, to which Florence adds, “on the western bank of Severn.” Bricge could scarcely be Bridgenorth, which is not even mentioned in Domesday. We ought, however, to find near the river, about Bridgenorth, earthworks thrown up by the Danes and by Æthelflæda, and it will be seen that there remain at the least three distinct works, any one or all of which may be of the ninth or tenth centuries. These are Oldbury, Quatford Castle, and Quatford.