West of this district came Berkshire, Oxfordshire, and Gloucestershire. Windsor, Wallingford and Reading have been mentioned. The keep of Windsor has a late Norman base, and the foundation of a gateway is of that date, as is the entrance to a very curious gallery in the chalk, which ran from the interior of the place beneath the buildings and the wall and opened as a postern upon the scarp of the main ditch. The mound upon which the round tower is placed is artificial and was surrounded by banks and ditches much on the plan of Arundel. Reading was an early castle and strongly posted between the Thames and the Kennet, upon an earthwork long before contested between the Danes and the Saxons. The castle is supposed to have been demolished by Henry III., in pursuance of the treaty of Wallingford: no trace of it remains. Wallingford has had better fortune: its mound and enclosure, the seat of the English Wigod, occupy one corner of the rectangular earthworks of the town, and rest upon the river. It was attached to the earldom of Cornwall, and was a place of great strength and splendour. A few fragments of masonry still remain, and some traces of Stephen’s camp on the opposite bank at Crowmarsh. There were also castles, though of small consequence and doubtful age, at Newbury, Brightwell, Farringdon, and Aldworth, the latter the seat of the Barons de la Beche. Oxford Castle was a place of great antiquity and very strong, and formed a part of the defences of the city. The mound remains and a crypt within it, but the keep is gone. There is seen, however, above the river bank a rude and early square tower of Norman work, now a prison. At Banbury, Alexander, Bishop of Lincoln, built a castle in 1125, which was held by the Crown under Edward II. At Middleton was a strong castle, held by Richard de Camville in the reign of John, and there were others, smaller buildings, at Bampton, Bedington, Dedington, and Watlington, possibly demolished by Henry II. Broughton, the castle of the Lords Say, is in this county. Woodstock, though a royal manor, does not seem to have been fortified. The castles at Ardley and Chipping-Norton were destroyed by Stephen. The latter had a moated mound.