Castle Combe motte and bailey

 archaeological site, motte-and-bailey castle, earthworks, scheduled ancient monument

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The monument includes a motte with four associated baileys set on a steep promontory overlooking By Brook, a tributary of the River Avon. The earthworks are orientated SW-NE and follow the line of contours making the monument appear ovoid in plan. The motte is close to the steep SW-facing slope and is 8m high. Traces of a wall around the top of the motte are visible while in the eastern corner the walls of the rectangular tower survive to a height of 3.5m. The baileys vary in size, are separated from each other by banks and ditches and tend to radiate out from the motte towards the north-east end of the monument. In three of the baileys there are the remains of a total of around seventeen buildings while the largest bailey, covering some 1.5ha at the NE end of the monument, contains two linear pillow mounds aligned NE-SW across the centre of the bailey, probably associated with a rabbit warren recorded in 1416, and a dry pond on the SE side. Although never excavated, finds from the monument include iron arrowheads, bucklers, spurs and a few Saxon coins. The whole of the monument is defined by a single bank and a ditch with a counterscarp. The ditch averages 5m wide and 2m deep and the bank up to 3m high. The location of the site and the survival of an outer bank at the NE end of the monument suggest the site may have been built on the site of an earlier promontory fort, dating probably to the Iron Age. The building of the castle may be ascribed to the de Dunstanvilles at around 1140. The family line ended in 1270 and the castle and barony transferred to Lord de Badlesmere in 1313.

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