DUDLEY, Staffordshire (Fig. 15).--William Fitz Ansculf held Dudley at the time of the Survey, "and there is his castle."[410] Mr Clark appears to accept the dubious tradition of a Saxon Dodda, who first built this castle in the 8th century, since he speaks of Dudley as "a great English residence."[411] This tradition, however, is not supported by Domesday Book, which shows Dudley to have been only a small and unimportant manor before the Conquest. The strong position of the hill was no doubt the reason why the Norman placed his castle there. There is no Norman masonry in the present ruins. The earliest work is that of the keep on the motte, a rectangular tower with round corner turrets, attributed by Mr W. St John Hope to about 1320. The first castle was demolished by Henry II. in 1175,[412] and an attempt to restore it in 1218 was stringently countermanded.[413] The case of Dudley is one of those which proves that Henry II. destroyed some lawful castles in 1175 as well as the unlawful ones. In 1264 a license to restore it was granted to Roger de Somery, in consideration of his devotion to the king's cause in the Barons' War.[414] The whole area of the castle, including the motte, but not including the works at the base of the hill on which it stands, is 1-3/4 acres. The bailey is an irregular oval, following the hill top. Dudley is an instance in which the value of the manor has gone down instead of up since the erection of the castle; this may perhaps be laid to the account of the devastation caused through the Staffordshire insurrection of 1069. DUNSTER, Somerset (Fig. 15).--Called Torre in Domesday Book. "There William de Moion has his castle."[415] The motte here appears to be a natural rock or _tor_, whose summit has been levelled and its sides scarped by art. About 80 feet below the top is a (roughly) half-moon bailey, itself a shelf on the side of the hill; there is another and much smaller shelf at the opposite end.[416] Some foundations found in the S.W. corner of the upper ward appear to indicate a former stone keep.[417] Dunster was only a small manor of half a hide before the Conquest, but afterwards its value tripled. There was a borough as well as a castle.[418] The castle became the _caput baroniæ_ of the De Moions, to whom the Conqueror gave fifty-six manors in different parts of the county. There is not the slightest reason to suppose that the site was fortified before the Conquest. Mr Clark remarks that "it is remarkable that no mouldings or fragments of Norman ornament have been dug up in or about the site, although there is original Norman work in the parish church." The simple explanation, probably, is that the first castle of De Moion was of wood, although on a site where it would have been possible to build in stone from the first, as it does not appear that any part of the motte is artificial. The area of the bailey is 1-3/4 acres. The value of Dunster had risen at the date of Domesday.[419]