THE Castle of Ogmore, in the county of Glamorgan, is situate upon the left bank of the Ewenny, about a hundred yards above its junction with the Ogmore river, and a mile and a half or two miles above the exit of their combined streams into the Bristol Channel.

These rivers are in summer usually low, but subject to occasional floods, more especially the Ogmore, by far the more impetuous of the two.

The valley in the gorge of which the Castle stands, descending from the interior of the country, is formed on the north by the high land of Bridgend and Merthyr Mawr, and the sand-hills of Newton, and on the south by the ridge on which Mr. Turberville's park of Ewenny is placed, and which terminates towards the sea in the celebrated quarries of Sutton. The opposite ridges, and the intervening valley, are formed of mountain limestone and its subordinate rocks, and present in a very remarkable gree the fissures and subterranean cavities which characterize such formations.

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The castle and manor of Ogmore (Wallicè Ogwr) were granted, anno 1091, by Fitz-Hamon to William de Londres, whose name stands at the top of the twelve feudatories, among whom, together with the British Einon, the newly-acquired lands of Morganne were divided.

The manor contained four knight's fees, and seems to have included the present manor of Dunraven, which, together with a castle, was granted by de Londres to his faithful servant Sir Arnold Butler. At the time of this gift, de Londres had acquired, by conquest from the Welsh, the lordship of Kydwelhy and Carnewilhion, in the county of Caermarthen.

William de Londres was succeeded by his son William, and he by Maurice de Londres, who seems to have been the founder of Ewenny Abbey,' the oldest part of which is of Norman

See his tomb engraved in Gent. Mag. for July 1831, p. 17.

work. Maurice left a daughter, who married "Seward, a rich man," by whom she left also a daughter, who married Henry Earl of Lancaster, and had issue Henry the Duke of that name, who thus became possessed of the manors of Ogmore, Kidwelhy, and Carnewilhion, which became parcel of the duchy.

Leland, who seems to have visited the Castle, speaks of it as "longing to the King, and meetly well repaired."

The neighbouring down still belongs to the Crown, as parcel of the duchy; but the Castle itself is the property of the Right Hon. Sir John Nicholl, of Merthyr-Mawr.

We shall commence the description of the Castle with the external defences. The whole work is surrounded by a moat in the form of a figure of 3, the connexion between the three points of the figure being kept up by the neighbouring river, from whence also the rest of the moat was anciently supplied with water. This moat varies in depth from twenty to thirty feet, and is about fifty feet in width.

The eastern of the islands thus formed is occupied by the Castle itself, the western by something between a homestead and an outwork, partaking of the characters of both. The connexion between the two is kept up by one of two causeways.

Entering the outwork from the west, we pass over the first of these causeways, consisting of a solid bank of earth, about five and twenty feet long by twelve broad, which passes across the outer moat; and through a cutting in a bank thrown up as a defence on its inside, we then enter upon a flat piece of sward, rather less than a quarter of an acre in extent, and defended on the east, west, and south, by the moat, and on the north by the somewhat precipitous bank of the river. On the northern side of this inclo

Leland, and Farmer following him, attribute this foundation to John de Londres; but no such person appears in the pedigree, which there is every reason for supposing to be substantially correct.

sure, are the walls of a cottage of the better sort, the stone window cases and pointed doorframe remaining perfect. There is a fireplace at the western end, and at the eastern is a sort of rude trilithon, of comparatively modern date, upon which, as we were informed, the court for the hundred is still held.

Proceeding from the entrance, straight across this inclosure, we pass a second moat over a causeway, similar in all respects to the last. Upon the opposite edge of this moat are the main buildings of the Castle; and the causeway terminates before the entrance portal.

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The Castle, upon which we about to enter, and which occupies the eastern limb of the 3, consists of a gateway, keep, buttress-tower, curtainwalls, lodgings, and a court.

The gateway, keep, and about 30 feet of the most elevated part of the curtain, extend from south to north along the western front, in the order in which we have enumerated them. The northern or that towards the river, is defended by a wall, now level with the soil within, and not more than six or eight feet high without. The eastern side, ascending from the river, is faced by a curtain about 20 feet high, containing a postern, now walled up, and a small buttress tower. The south-eastern and southern curtains, inclining to each other at an angle of about 40°, are much battered, and present several breaches, and the space, about thirty feet, between the west-south-western point of this curtain and the gateway, presents nothing but an obscure line of foundation.

The lodgings, if such they were, exist only as foundations, and seem to have been chiefly attached to the eastern wall.

The gateway, to return to our original position, remains only as an isolated mass of masonry, barely sufficient to support its contained arch; it does not appear even to have boasted a tower, but to have been a simple perforation in the wall, like that at Newcastle juxta Bridgend, only with a slight thickening of the wall.

The gate is unprovided with either portcullis or stockade; but the gate having been folding, a recess has been cut in the vault, to admit each leaf to

lie open; and on the north side is a niche besides. The arch is pointed, and probably early English.'

The gateway is separated from the keep by an interval of about twelve feet, and the opposing masonry of that building is perfectly smooth.

The keep is a lofty quadrangular building, oblong north and south, and measuring 30 feet by 50, with walls of about eight feet thick. It is divided into a ground-floor and two upper stories, accessible only by a well stair, which, with an additional chamber, occupies a turret, quadrangular below, and nearly circular above, which caps the north-western angle of the building.

The style of the keep is Norman, and it is in tolerable preservation, excepting that the angle diagonal to the turret, the south-eastern, is in ruins ; and the door, probably towards the south, has disappeared along with it.

The ground-floor has been a damp, gloomy chamber, receiving light from the door, and from a small window, now much shattered, towards the north, and leading by a small roundheaded door into the stair, and thence into the chamber above. The ceiling of this floor was of wood, and has of course long since disappeared.

Ascending the well stair about 12 steps, and passing a loop-hole to the right, we arrive at two doors; that on the left leading into the turret chamber, that on the right opening upon the first story of the keep. This story is about 30 feet in height, and is lighted by two small windows to the west, and two large ones to the north and south. These are all round-headed, and perfectly plain. Between the nearest of these western windows and the door (which, it should be observed, projects, the angle of the chamber being filled up, to contain the well stair,) is a large fire-place, supported by two plain Norman columns, of which the capitals and upper part of the shafts remain; the pedestals and lower portion of the shaft, together with the arch or impost, or whatever it may have been, have fallen away. The walls of this chamber are about six feet thick.

The left-hand door, before mentioned, leads along a short and very narrow passage to a turret chamber five

feet by eight, with a loop opening to the west, and another to the south, enfilading the gateway. The northern side of this chamber is occupied by a drain, which communicates with a large arched vault, occupying the basement of the turret, and probably opening into the river below.

Ascending a few more turns of the stair, and passing another loop-hole, we arrive at the second story, of equal height with the last, but somewhat larger, from the thinning off of the wall, forming a ledge of about a foot in depth, upon which the floor formerly rested. The door enters this chamber obliquely, borrowing about a foot from the substance of the northern wall. This chamber is lighted by a large round-headed window to the north, and a second to the west, and has a fireplace exactly above, though much smaller than the last, the flue of which runs up behind this to the battlement.

The chamber of the tower corresponding to this story, is rather larger than that below. The windows lie to the south and east. The drainage of this chamber, descending on the north side, passes behind the last, into which it finally falls.

At this chamber the northern portion of the turret ceases, terminating in a sort of rude dome; while the staircase, which is formed in the wall itself, and the remainder of the turret, is continued to the battlement. The summit is rugged and overgrown, but no traces of the crenellations were visible from below. The newel, and in many places the steps of the well stair, have disappeared.

There are marks of a gable upon the north face of the keep, ascending as high as the top of the first story, as though a building had formerly existed on that side, which seems indeed most probably to have been the case, although even its foundations are no longer visible.

The two oblong buildings, the foundations of which remain abutting against the eastern curtain, were possibly lodgings; but it would be idle to speculate upon the uses of buildings, the foundations of which are scarcely discernible.

The entrance to the single chamber contained in the buttress tower is ob

lique, and not above two feet wide. The chamber itself is small, and contains two loops, one towards the east, overlooking the ditch, and the other towards the south, enfilading the curtain. There is not room, however, in this chamber to draw a bow. The drain is towards the east.

There are marks along the inside of the south-eastern curtain, as though it had given support to a building; it is perforated by a loophole. This line of defence is now about twenty, and was probably never more than thirty feet in height.

Between the south-east angle of the keep and the buttress tower, a wall seems to have extended dividing the court into a northern and southern, or inner and outer ballium, thereby guarding against surprise. These courts are at present occupied, the inner by a garden and the outer by a pasture. The interior of the keep is choked up by elder-trees, and further obscured by a small hovel.

Beyond the moat, upon a sort of glacis towards the east, is a slight depression, which seems to have been the well. It is now nearly filled up.

The walls of this Castle are perforated by those curious holes frequently remaining in ancient buildings, and which appear to have supported the original scaffold.

The material of which the Castle is constructed is chiefly mountain limestone, and has, with occasional rolled fragments of sandstone cemented together, a kind of mortar very inferior to that used at Caerphilly.

Upon reviewing carefully this Castle, the antiquary will probably refer its buildings to two very distinct periods. The keep and its angular buttress are evidently Norman, and were probably erected by William de Londres, the original grantee under FitzHamon, in or about the year 1091. The eastern horseshoe moat is probably of the same date, and perhaps part of the curtain wall. We should be inclined to refer the gateway, remainder of the moat, and greater part of the present curtain and buttress tower, to a period later by a century; and the cottage, to the ruins of which we have referred, is probably of the time of Elizabeth, or a little earlier, unless indeed its doorway has been

taken from the ruins of the Castle, and interpolated at a subsequent period.

Near to the river, upon the opposite bank, below the junction, is a castellated manor house, called in Welsh Trichautor, the station of the three hundred,' from a notion probably of its having been a sort of outpost to Ogmore. Its modern name is Candleston. The mass of the present structure is not very ancient, but in one of the bed-rooms is a curious and rather handsome arch, feathered and crocketted, and with pinnacles in the 'decorated English style,' which, with the wall against which it rests, may be safely referred to the 14th century. Upon the summit of the neighbouring hill of Merthyr Mawr, above the hospitable mansion of Sir J. Nicholl, is a circular British encampment, part of the enceinte of which is formed by

a tremendous natural abyss in the limestone rock. Within the inclosure are the ruins of an old chapel and two singular and very ancient tombstones, which, if very carefully examined, might perhaps throw some light upon the age of those curious obelisks or upright stones which are found in various parts of the kingdom, seeing that there is upon each of these a tolerably legible Latin inscription, and that they are surrounded by crosses in the Maltese fashion, while the back and sides exactly resemble in decoration the stones above alluded to; of which it may be observed, that there is a very fine one in the churchyard of Rothley in Leicestershire, on which also may be traced the Maltese cross.

A bird's-eye view of Ogmore Castle will be given on a subsequent occasion, together with one of Newcastle, in the same county. G. T. C.

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• Μύθων τε ρητῆρ ̓ ἔμεναι, πρηκτηρά τε

pywv."-Iliad, Homer, ix. 443. THERE is not perhaps a single county in England wherein we shall not find many families who have inherited some landed estate, greater or less, the possession of which, in the paternal or maternal line, may be traced back for several generations. Of these the family of the Drurys in Suffolk and Norfolk, whether at Thurston, Bury St. Edmunds, Rougham, Ickworth, or Hawsted,—in the former county,-or of Lessgyatt Hall in the latter,-is one instance, by no means the least remarkable or celebrated. We are informed, from the

memoir of Dr. Drury's life in the Annual Obituary for this year (an article written with no vulgar pen, and affording internal evidence of authenticity, fidelity, and modesty,) that the Drurys of Hawsted may be traced up even to the Norman invasion, — and that they have represented their native county for several ages in Parliament. Of this stock was Sir W. Drury, Governor of Ireland in the reign of Elizabeth, who then suppressed the rebellion, and, with it, the house of Desmond for ever. Sir Drue

Drury, who was nearly related by marriage to Anne Boleyne, was associated with Sir Amyas Pawlett, as joint-guardian of the person of the Queen of Scots, so unfortunately famous.. Of this branch were also the residents of Drury-house in London; which was afterwards converted into the street or lane, together with the theatre, of that name. Sir R. Drury of Rougham, who died in 1622, at the age of 82, (most of the Druries, by the bye, as well as the subject of this memoir, lived to a very advanced age,) was the last possessor but one of the ancient patrimony, which was squandered away in the person of his grandson. It was, however, from a younger son of Sir R. that Dr. Drury