Sidney Oldall Addy

“ The children who make mounds and ditches for their houses on the sea shore are perhaps, unconsciously and by instinct, repeating what their forefathers did ages ago, and what their fathers still do when they build great walls round their parks and gardens, not to shut out their enemies or beasts of prey, but for reasons best known to themselves. ”

“ The names of places in England ending in tún, wurð, etc., show that the enclosed or protected homestead was common here, and what protection could have been better, when stone buildings and castles were not, than an encircling mound of earth and a big ditch?
It seems to be almost an instinct in an Englishman to surround himself, if not with a great earth mound, at all events with a big garden wall. ”

“ Tacitus, as is well known, describes the old Germans not as dwelling in towns, but as inhabiting dwellings scattered here and there in the fields and woods. "Every man," he says, "surrounds his house with a spatium"—whatever that may mean. ”