with a large ditch round it75. It appears that lords' settlements involving simple
castles of this class were given the name - evidently by the lord's own English-
speaking followers - of 'Ingliston', i.e. tun or permanent settlement of a
distinctively 'English' (we might say Anglo-Norman) character, as contrasted with
a typical Cumbric, Scoto-Pictish or Scandinavian settlement76. If we plot the
place-name Ingliston on the map [see Figure 2] we come up with a cultural frontier
of some interest, which belongs most probably to the period c. 1150-1250. It is
only tangentially related to the ever-shifting language frontier, and bears little if
any relation to the political ambitions of the Scottish kings. Nevertheless, it is a
useful reminder that in the middle ages, as in all other periods of history, Borders
are not invariably fixed lines on maps, demarcated on the landscape and furnished
with frontier posts, customs officials and guards.
7~* Cruden, S., The Scottish Castle (3rd edn. Edinburgh, 1981), 6-10; Talbot, E.J., "The defences of earth
and timber castles", in: Caldwell, D.H. (ed.), Scottish Weapons and Fortifications (Edinburgh, 1981),
1-9; Tabraham, C.J., "Norman settlement in upper Clydesdale: recent archaeological fieldwork", in:
Transactions of the Dumfriesshire and Galloway Natural History and Antiquarian Society 53 (1977-
8), 114-28.
76 The first scholar to notice a correlation between Ingliston place-names and motte castles seems to have
been W. Mackay Mackenzie {The Mediaeval Castle in Scotland, 1927, 29). He saw the name as
indicating the nationality of the community dependent on the castle and cited five occurrences. I would
suggest rather that the name Ingliston effectively meant 'defensible (or fortified) settlement of Anglo-
Norman type' without specific reference to the ethnic origin of the settlers. This seems to be supported by
the form of one of the eighteen examples in Figure 2, "Engliscasteltown" (Registrum Magni Sigilli
Regum Scotorum, I, ed. J.M. Thomson, Edinburgh, 1984 reprint, p. 510), if this may be relied upon.
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