T. E. Lawrence’s Undergraduate Dissertation – Page 60

Roman walls of London and Chester. There seems to have been a number of Roman enceintes defensible in England at this period, but no new complete circuits of walls were put up to our knowledge. At the Conquest probably Oxford and Exeter alone, of post-Roman towns, were stone-walled. Exeter is so referred to in 1067, and at Oxford there is still standing a church tower, half-defensive, with signs of communication by bridge with an outer wall. Its date must be within a few years of the Conquest, and more probably before than after, since Earl Algar in the reign of the Confessor held houses in Oxford to which were attached duties of maintaining the wall in proper repair. The Normans were not great workers in earth. Normandy has no camp to compare for a moment with Old Sarum : generally her mounds are insignificant, and when William threw up such places in England, as at York, the Saxons found their destruction a mere holiday task. To secure a palisaded camp against fire necessitated a broad berm, and a ditch of many men's labour. The Flemish model after which the Norman nobility had shaped their own castles was a mound with a vying ditch of such steepness that it had to be crossed by a timbered bridge (c.f. Castle Rising is an English example. The typical form of castle associated with the Norman is, however, of course the famous square keep. Yt is hardly possible to give the Normans credit for its invention. They were not an original race, or rather their originality was