Essex References in Joseph Strutt's 'Manners': (10) Rayleigh

Complete View of the Manners, Customs, Arms, Habits & Co of the Inhabitants of England, 1774, by Joseph Strutt.

Essex references

10.   Rayleigh

Page 93

Rayleigh Castle: Plan

“On plate 30, fig 1 & 2, is the plan and perspective view of an old fortification at Raleigh in the county of Essex (1).  At A on the plan is the evident remains of the barbican or fortified breast work of the castle,* yet very perfect.  B is a Norman keep, divided from the base court C, both which antiently (in the time of the Saxons) were one entire keep or hill. #  The communication here between the keep and base court is not over a bridge, (as is usual in the castles entirely of Norman construction) but over a narrow neck of earth, left in the dividing of the former castle, which spared them the trouble of digging it quite through, and answered all the purposes of a bridge.  We never find the keep and base court thus joined, but where the Normans occupied and rebuilt the castles of the Saxons.”

Rayleigh Castle: Perspective

“Footnotes:  * Some suppose these fortified banks to be the remains of the fortifications of the Romans; but I have no doubt but that in the present case they were only what were called the barbicans; though at Plusly [Pleshey] in Essex the Norman castle actually stands in the midst of a Roman entrenchment, which is of great circumference, but even there the barbican is (though much defaced) to be distinguished.

#  I have often in the course of this work made use of the word keep, both in the description of the Saxon as well as Norman entrenchments: when I applied it to the Saxons, I mean by it, the whole extent on the ground work of the castle, exclusive of the ditch.  By the Norman keep I would be understood to mean only the hill constantly raised at one end of the castle, which is mostly small and high; and though it seems not in the least to bear any analogy to the ground work of the Saxon castles, yet I will not deny that the Normans may have been to them indebted for the first hint, making their keep smaller and higher, and adding an extensive base court; thinking by this double fortification to render themselves much more secure.”

[Plate 30]  Ground plot of Rayleigh castle, see p.93.  Perspective of ditto.  3, St Botolph’s Priory, see p.102.  4, St John’s Abbey gate, p.103.

Reference: (1) See Morant’s Hist. of Essex. 

Supplementary Note: Raleigh Mount in now in the care of the National Trust.