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base-court, roughly horseshoe-shaped, defended by a water moat. The long inclosure on the west was once defended with a moat and rampart on all sides, and between it and the mount is a singularly-shaped court. A farmhouse and buildings, erected in the base-court, have added to the destruction of the An image should appear at this position in the text.Eardsley Castle traces of the old work,and no masonry is visible. The water from the streams filled the moats efficiently, and now turns two mills, one on the north, the other on the south.

We learn from Domesday that in the days of Edward the Confessor Eardisley (there spelt Herdeslege) was in the hands of Earl Edwin, and at the period of the Survey was one of the estates of the Norman Roger de Laci. No castle is referred to, but una domus defensabilis (a house capable of defence) is mentioned. No antiquary viewing the earthworks, especially the odd shape of the court west of the mount, can doubt that the whole castrametation has been altered, and that probably a mount stronghold with its attached horseshoe-shaped court has been dumped upon or within an earlier work. It is probable that the domus defensabilis occupied an earlier work, the mount and court structure being erected subsequently to the period of Domesday (1086). A paper on 'Eardisley and its Castle,' written by the Rev. R. Hyett Warner, appeared in the Transactions of the Woolhope Field Club.^[1]

Edvin Ralph.—This stronghold, which we must include in Class E, though its present condition hardly warrants so doing, is situated under 2 miles north-north-west of Bromyard, upon ground about 520 ft. above sea level, with no great variation in the heights of the land round. The position has no natural defence, except that the ground is inclined to be swampy.

The entrenchments are not in a perfect state of preservation, but appear to have consisted of a mount, and one or more large inclosures. The mount is of small size, and is practically not raised above the natural level; possibly the ditch was once much deeper, and contained a larger quantity of water than now. Upon the north and north-west are traces of moating, apparently forming a court or two courts, as at Kingsland, 12½ miles west-by-north, but the exact form is not easy to determine.

An image should appear at this position in the text.Edvin Ralph Castle Ewyas Harold Castle.—This earthwork is situated 10 miles south-west of Hereford, and Stands upon a tongue of land