CORFE, Dorset (Fig. 13).--Mr Eyton has shown that for the _castellum Warham_ of Domesday Book we ought to read _Corfe_, because the castle was built in the manor of Kingston, four miles from Wareham.[380] And this is made clear by the _Testa de Nevill_, which says that the church of Gillingham was given to the nunnery of Shaftesbury in exchange for the land on which the castle of Corfe is placed.[381] Because King Edward the Martyr was murdered at Corfe, at some place where his stepmother Elfrida was residing, it has been inferred that there was a Saxon castle at Corfe; and because there is a building with some herring-bone work among the present ruins, it has been assumed that this building is the remains of that castle or palace. But the _Anglo-Saxon Chronicle_, the only contemporary authority for the event, says nothing of any castle at Corfe, but simply tells us that Edward was slain at Corfe Geat, a name which evidently alludes to a gap or passage through the chalk hills, such as there is at Corfe.[382] Nor is there any mention of Corfe as a fortress in Anglo-Saxon times; it is not named in the _Burghal Hidage_, and we do not hear of any sieges of it by the Danes. Nor is it likely that the Saxons would have had a fortress at Corfe, when they had a fortified town so near as Wareham.[383] Kingston, the manor in which Corfe is situated, was not an important place, as it had no dependent soke. The language of Domesday absolutely upsets the idea of any Saxon castle or palace at Corfe, as it tells us that William obtained the land for his castle from the nuns of Shaftesbury, and we may be quite sure they had no castle there.[384]