MAIDEN CASTLE.
TO those who have travelled in the South of England, and who in particular know something of the wealth and interest of the prehistoric remains in the county of Dorset, it must have been a considerable shock to discover among a number of "lots" which are offered for sale the name of Maiden Castle. There is to be a "great land sale " at Dor- chester on Monday, July 29th, when among other properties the Martinstown Estate, distant three miles from Dorchester, and comprising 1,900 acres, is to be put up for auction in thirty-one lots, of which Maiden Castle, described by the auctioneers as "the finest and best-preserved monument of prehistoric times," presumably forms one. We have been threatened lately with the loss or destruction of more than one ancient relic or monument, but never, surely, with a greater loss than this. The idea of Maiden Castle being built over, or levelled, or planted, is unthinkable. To permit such destruction would be a disgrace to our generation.
Maiden Castle is a great prehistoric encampment—perhaps the greatest which we possess—of which the origin is disputed. Some antiquaries hold that such names as Maiden Castle, Maiden Bower, and so on, indicate camps of refuge for women in the time of war. This would infer a Saxon derivation, and Saxon women protected from Danish raiders. Another inter- pretation is that a " maiden castle " is one which has never been taken; another, suggested in the "New English Dictionary," is that maiden castles are those which are so strong that they could be defended by maidens. Geoffrey of Monmouth calls Edinburgh Castle eastrum puellarum, " the fort of the maidens." But that, surely, is looking for a derivation too late in history. These prehistoric forts must have been known by name to their builders. The more widely accepted deriva- tion of the name is Mai Dan, Goidelic or Gaelic for " hill fortress," which takes us back to the Bronze Age, when, possibly, the fortress was built. But here, again, we are in a region of dispute. Maiden Castle is defended on the north side by three ramparts, and on the south by four —a complicated arrangement of earthworks which is generally supposed to be the work of builders of the Bronze Age. But there have been found numerous remains of the Stone Age in Maiden Castle, and an ingenious theory has been put forward suggesting that the fortress is in fact the work of two ages. The Stone Age camp possibly had only one or two ramparts, and covered the eastern portion of the hill, and later on builders of the Bronze Age added other ramparts and developed the camp to the west. However that may be, the camp as it stands to-day is one of prodigious strength. It covers almost the whole of an oval hill with the longer sides to the north and south. The area enclosed by the outermost rampart is about 115 acres, and the inner area protected by the ramparts is about 45 acres. The plain on which the hill stands is some 220 feet above sea-level, and the top of the hill is about 210 feet higher still, so that it forms a magnificent natural rallying point for the country round. But mere measurements fail to give an idea of the superb proportions of the ramparts which have been carved and piled out of the flank of the hill. You enter the circuit of the fortification from the southern side, per- Imps, which is nearest the road, and find yourself walking along a kind of broad, curving, green alley running between banks which grow higher and higher. You climb to the highest central level, walk towards the northern side of the hill, and find yourself looking down a sharply pitched wall of green grass, almost too steep to descend, into a long, deep ditch, with another steep wall on the far side. Climb that, and you find an even higher and steeper wall beneath you, with another long, deep ditch and another bank ; you get down somehow into the ditch and up the other side, and find a third rampart sloping to the base of the hill. There is the same succession of ditch and rampart on the south side, though the pitch of the banks is not quite so steep ; at the eastern and western ends there is a sort of maze of smaller ramparts, which are in their way one of the strongest features of the defence, for an enemy breaking in would find himself perpetually striking into a dead wall, and would be compelled to go the way which the defenders meant him to go ; they would know exactly where he would have to turn and where be would be checked. If, in addition, you imagine these banks and ramparts strengthened with stockades and wooden spikes, and if you put behind each line of the stockade a ring of sharpshooters, it is not difficult to see that an attempt to carry such a fortification would be doomed to failure almost from the beginning. The attacking force could never come to a hand-to-hand fight except by climbing the wall-like ramparts, and to get up three or four one after another, apart from any question of fighting while doing so, would be a severe enough test for the strongest and wiriest. Certainly the camp as it stands must have earned the reputation, however the name may be derived, of a " maiden" fortress.
Earthworks on so prodigious a scale, and this earthwork in particular, suggest some difficult and curious questions. How were they built ? Are they simply and solely the work of men's hands, each separate sod or lump of chalk cut with the blunt and petty weapons of primitive man—the pick-axe of deer horn, the stone spade, the basket to carry soil from place to place ? We may look at these ramparts of Maiden Castle, sixty feet high in places, and wonder how it could enter into the scheme of primitive ideas even to contemplate so vast an achieve- ment with tools so absurdly inadequate. But we may retied, in so doing, that we are looking at primitive work from a wholly wrong standpoint. Neolithic man never thought his weapons or tools inadequate for the purpose for which be used them. He regarded his beautifully sharpened axe and arrow-head as the newest invention and an immense improvement on the clumsy contrivances which he would hear of from his grand- father. He saw nothing absurd in starting work at a great rampart with a stone spade when he had no idea of anything better. As for the mere size of the work, he was accustomed to bigger jobs of manual labour than we are. He somehow got the monoliths and trilithons of Avebury and Stonehenge into position, a business involving all sorts of problems of leverage and haulage which we, armed only with his tools and weapons, would probably give up as insoluble. Minor works of a considerable size were all round him ; be carried baskets full of the soil to make his long barrows, not because long barrows were necessary for exist- ence, but because it seemed fitting to him that they should be placed in prominent positions. He dug, or ploughed, or carved the long hillside terraces which we call linchets, and about whose use our historians and antiquaries dispute with such unflinching vigour. The mere size of Maiden Castle is not so much a difficulty as a marvel. But there are other special problems which Maiden Castle sets the antiquary. How was the fortress supplied with water ? How did the designers of the fortress come to select the position unless the camp could be supplied with water ? Many of these primitive earthworks seem to be strangely ill-supplied either as regards springs, streams, or ponds. Is it possible that thousands of years ago the water-level in the chalk was much higher than it is to-day, so that wells could be sunk or springs tapped on the side of hills which are now permanently dry ? That is a view which is held by some investigators, who point out that, owing to natural and artificial causes, the water-level in the chalk is still sinking to-day. Another theory is that the camps were supplied by dew-ponds, and it is true that there are generally to be found traces of ancient ponds in the neighbourhood of these fortresses. Maiden Castle is unique in having a dew-pond actually within its ramparts—a position which seems to have been generally avoided, possibly because the cattle driven into the fortified enclosure would trample the pond. But, after all, a people which could mount a stockade on a rampart could fence cattle away from a pond. The real reason for the indifference to a good water supply which seems to have been felt by the designers of these camps perhaps is very simple. Water was not a prime necessity of defence. The fortress would not be regularly invested; an assault would be short and sharp and either driven off or successful.
But Maiden Castle possesses, beyond its value as an ancient monument, even a further claim to generous and careful preservation. It is a really very beautiful thing in itself, with its high green banks, its flowers and grasses, its rabbit burrows which now and then tumble out celts and worked flint and fragments of pottery, scratched out from the loose soil. It stands, too, in a glorious position, high above the level Dorset pasture lands, with their white flocks shepherded through the year under its flank and over the plains beyond. It is worth preservation as a pleasure ground alone, and as an open space of great beauty, apart from its historic interest ; so that it is to be sincerely hoped that a purchaser may be found for it either privately or through the goodwill of Dorchester and its neighbourhood. The auctioneers, we are glad to see by a letter in Wednesday's Times, are sincerely anxious for the preservation of the camp as it stands, and express their readiness to sell the property before the auction, provided that their reserve is reached. They state that the reserve is low, and we can only hope that a purchaser will come forward.
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