In other old, tall things news: a Prospect Mound was a garden feature in Tudor England. Essentially an artificial hill, it allowed you to climb up and survey your property – something to provide a nice view (“Prospect”).
As Francis Bacon put it in his famous essay On Gardens of 1625: ‘At the End of both the Side Grounds, I would have a Mount of some Pretty Height…to looke abroad into the Fields.’
Prospect mounds may also have been quite a practical thing to build:
Was it done for entirely aesthetic reasons? Perhaps not because other general building work and particularly the digging of moats or fishponds, cellars or rubbish pits left lots of debris and earth which had to be put somewhere.
A number of them still exist (see this article, from which the above quotes were taken). Unsurprisingly, not all were purpose built; an existing mound could be integrated into the garden – prehistoric earthworks for example, or the motte from an ancient motte-and-bailey castle. Which brings me to a (possible) second interesting random fact…
Upthread I posted about the small town of Lewes in Sussex having two castles (!). Well, maybe I was wrong – maybe it has three (!!) Its origins are not known, but The Mount may be a repurposed motte. CastlesUK.net lists it, with the comment:
The Mount is a possible earthwork motte, which could also be defined as a 17th century garden feature, used as a prospect mound. Standing at the eastern end of a low spur, the mound dominates the entrance to north, west and south-east valleys but nothing is known as to its origin.
Lewes Priory - The Mount and Dripping Pan
The view from The Mount, with another castle clearly visible on the horizon (you can zoom and rotate this image).
Another view:
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