National Trust

121304

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Description:  The monument includes the earthworks and interior area of a motte and bailey castle believed to date from the immediate post-Conquest period, soon after October 1066.
On the south side of the monument is a circular mound - the motte - 30m in diameter and 2m above the general ground level at its crest. The centre of the motte is scarred by a depression resulting from mistaken barrow digging in the 19th century, but much of the motte survives intact. It is completely surrounded by a ditch some 6m wide and still nearly 1m deep, and beyond the ditch around the southern half is a low bank 0.6m high which has been truncated slightly by ploughing on the southern extremity. The motte is flanked to the N by two smaller mounds.
A horse-shoe shaped ditch joins onto the motte ditch on the north-west and north-east corners. This ditch, again some 6m wide but deeper than the motte ditch (up to 1.5 to 1.8m deep) defines the bailey area. On the inner edge is a strong earthen bank up to 1.2m above the interior level and therefore up to 3m above the bottom of the ditch. This bank, in places 14m across, is breached to both east and west, and the ditch is correspondingly causewayed to allow entry into the bailey. On the outer edge is a second bank, this one slighter and diminishing to nothing around the northern side where additional defence is made unnecessary by the steep slope of the scarp slope. The low bank which extends southwards from the eastern edge of the monument is a later land division and is not included in the scheduling. Archaeological Comments - Site:121304*0 This castle was constructed on the border between two rapes - Bramber and Lewes. Rapes were introduced by the Saxons and modified by the Normans as a means of dividing Sussex up administratively. Bramber rape was a new one at the time of the Normans. Two of his earls held the lordships of the rapes here. This castle has large views both to north and south. It is likely to have been important at least in the early post-Conquest years as a display of power and the 'new order' of the Normans. Such castles acted as garrison forts during offensive military operations, as strongholds, and in may cases, as aristocratic residences and the centre of local or royal administration. Sussex was relatively easily quelled and therefore its use is more likely to have been administrative and residential than as a fort or stronghold. Nevertheless the two earls were on opposite sides when the barons tried to overthrow the kingdom and so this castle may have had some defence role then.

Status: Scheduled Monument

Country:  England

County:  West Sussex

District:  Mid Sussex

Parish:  Fulking

Grid Reference:   TQ237110

Map Reference:  [EPSG:27700] 523780, 111000

Period/Subject:  410 - 1065 - MOTTE AND BAILEY

Identifiers: 
[ADS] Depositor Id: 121304
[ADS] Associated Id: HBSMR Id: MNA127357
[ADS] Import RCN: NTSMR-MNA127357

People Involved: 
[Publisher] National Trust