More information : SY 16069550) Farway Castle (NAT) (1)
Farway castle. A circular earthwork 200 feet in diameter
surrounded by a low bank and shallow ditch. A simple defensive
enclosure. (2)
Farway Castle which has no entrance through its bank and ditch
stands within the Broad Down (Farway). Bronze Age necropolis
where the barrows cluster most thickly. If it is not an 18th
century plantation bank it may be assumed to be a Bronze Age
structure possibly analogous to the ring ditches or henge
monuments of Dorchester Oxfordshire. (3)
Farway Castle, including groups of round barrows (SY 19 NE 6,
9 and 25) is published under the heading 'Burial Mounds ...
and Ritual and Ceremonial Sites; Scheduled No.253. (4)
SY 16069550. Farway Castle, earthwork. Scheduled No.253. (5)
The enclosure bank of Farway Castle is well preserved,
flat-topped and continuous. With an average width of 8.0m. and
internal height of 0.8m. The surrounding ditch is 2.0m in
average width and 0.6m deep except on the south where it
spreads to form a winter-pond. Mature trees, scrub and bracken,
cover the bank and level interior. (6)
This earthwork is marked on the OS 2" drawing of 1806-7 but not
named. It might well have originated in the 18th century
landscaping which modified an adjacent barrow (SY 19 NE 6A). (7)
'Farway Castle', at 245m. OD, lies on a very slight southwest
slope upon a broad generally flat-topped ridge. It is formed by
a continuous bank with outer-ditch which enclose a circular,
levelled area, 53 metres in diameter raised up to 0.4 metres
above the surrounding ground level. The bank is 7.5 metres wide
and the ditch 2.0 metres wide, giving an overall diameter of
72 metres. The ditch is sharply cut on its outer edge and 0.5
metres deep, save on the southwest where an excess of water has
made it wider and shallower. The bank is of rather irregular
height, 0.5 to 0.8 metres; measured from the external natural
ground level. Internally it is from 0.2 to 0.5 metres high.
The raised interior is not in the nature of a tree ring
enclosure or of a prehistoric domestic or pastoral earthwork
where, in addition, some form of entrance could be expected.
The sharpness of the ditch and the irregular height of the bank
suggest that the earthwork was converted to a tree ring in the
18th or 19th century by re-cutting the ditch and enlarging, or
just possibly, creating the bank. What may be the original
ditch can be traced outside the later re-cut from the northeast
to the southeast a distance of about 50 metres. Here a shallow
depression, little more than 0.1 metre deep, parallels the
obvious ditch, 3.0 metres outside it.
On balance 'Farway Castle' seems most likely to be a BA monument of ritual type and part of the Farway necropolis.
Surveyed at 1:2500 on M.S.D (8)
Farway Castle, a large circular earthwork enclosure circa 53m in diameter formed by a bank with an external ditch and identified as an Iron Age farmstead. Bank is 7.5m in width and 0.5-0.8m in height, with a gradual inner slope, a flat top, and a steep outer face falling directly into the ditch. Ditch is between 2m and 4m in width and 0.5m deep. The circuit of the enclosure is complete with no breaks in the bank or causeways across the ditch. Overall diameter of the monument is circa 76m. Bank converted into a continuous field boundary in the 18th or 19th century causing the loss of one or more entrances. Recorded in 1868 by Kirwan and referred to in an inventory of the mid-18th century by Dean Milles. Scheduled. For the designation record of this site please see The National Heritage List for England. (9 & 10)
Surveyed 1:500 by Hazel Riley and Volunteers for the POH project.
Farway Castle comprises three elements: a circular bank, an external ditch and a counterscarp bank. The bank encloses a circular area 51m N/S and 50m E/W; the whole site measures 73m N/S and 72m E/W. The bank has a smooth, U-shaped profile . The top of the bank is 1-2m wide and measures 1.2-1.4m from the top of the bank to the bottom of the ditch. The ditch bottom is 2m wide, but widens to over 5m in the southwest quadrant which is occupied by standing water for much of the year and represents the remains of a stock-watering pond. There are several hollows in the bottom of the ditch which may be original features showing how the ditch was dug in segments, or which may be the result of modification in the post-medieval period.
Farway Castle has been variously interpreted. In the 18th century it was described as a Danish fort (Milles 1747-1762, A Parochial History of Devon Vol 2 Parish Descriptions , Farway parish) in a later paper it was a British hill fort (1871, 649 – Notes on the pre-historic archaeology of East Devon Part IV Trans Devon Assoc 4). Farway Castle was interpreted as a Bronze Age monument of ritual type and part of the Farway necropolis by Norman Quinnell of the Ordnance Survey Archaeology Division (source 8 above). The latest scheduling document interpreted Farway Castle as an Iron Age earthwork enclosure (source 9 above).
This large scale survey strongly suggests that Farway Castle is a prehistoric
funerary or ceremonial enclosure at the heart of the Farway barrow complex.
The morphology of the site - a regular, circular bank with an external ditch
- suggests that it is a henge monument. Henge monuments are usually Neolithic, which would place this monument as the earliest in the landscape, since the barrows are thought to be early Bronze Age. (11)
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