“Rex etc. dilecto et fideli suo Godescallo de Maghelins salutem. Precipimus tibi quod ex parte nostra firmiter precipias omnibus illis qui motas habent in valle de Muntgumery quod sine dilatione motas suas bonis bretaschiis firmari faciant ad securitatem et defensionem suam et parcium illarum.”[1] And not only in the defences of these lesser motes and fortified private houses did timber play an important part. Turrets of timber were prepared for the castle of Montgomery, and even Shrewsbury itself, the seat successively of three most powerful earls and the chief place in their earldom, was by no means wholly a work in masonry. In the reign of Edward I. the jurors appointed to report upon the condition of the castle, state: “Quod unus magnus turris ligneus qui edificatur in castro Salop corruit in terram tempore domini Uriani de St. Petro tunc vice comitis et meremium ejusdem turris tempore suo et temporibus aliorum vice comitum preterea existencium ita consummatur et destruitur quod nichil de illo remansit in magnum dampnum domini Regis et deterioracionem ejusdem castri.” In a French charter of 1329 occurs, “Premierement le motte et les fossez d’entour le motte de Maiex,” and in 1331, “Le motte de mon Manoir de Caieux et les fossez entour.” It appears, then, that from an early period, certainly from the ninth century, it was a common practice in constructing a strong place, whether a private dwelling or a military post, to place it upon the summit of a mound, and to surround both the mound and an appended enclosure with defences of earth, and that in many, probably for some time in all, cases the building within and the defences around such places were of timber, and indeed, so far as they stood on made ground, necessarily so. Sometimes probably, when the front was more extended, as when a small pasture ground attached to the main fortress was to be protected from sudden assaults, recourse was had to a “haia” or “clausura.” In viewing one of these moated mounds we have only to imagine a central timber house on the top of the mound, built of half trunks of trees set upright between two waling pieces at the top and bottom, like the old church at Greensted, with a close paling around it along the edge of the table top, perhaps a second line at its base, and a third along the outer edge of the ditch, and others not so strong upon the edges of the outer courts, with bridges of planks across the ditches, and huts of “wattle and dab” or of timber within the enclosures, and we shall have a very fair idea of a fortified dwelling of a thane or franklin in England, or of the corresponding classes in Normandy from the eighth or ninth centuries down to the date of the Norman Conquest.