Christian antiquities -- Great Britain; Folklore -- Great Britain; Great Britain -- Antiquities
Another dilapidated chapel, now used as a barn, is situated within the
oval camp of Chisbury, near Great Bedwyn, Wiltshire. This earthwork,
which has double, and in some parts treble, lines of trenches, is
described by Sir R. Colt Hoare as one of the finest specimens of
castrametation in England. One rampart is 45 feet in height. The
existing ruins represent a Decorated fabric which was dedicated to St
Martin, but Mr A. H. Allcroft, in his _Earthwork of England_, suggests
that a church was erected here after the drawn battle between Wessex and
Mercia in A.D. 675. On the hill above Standish Church, Gloucestershire,
is a somewhat notable camp. Although it is said that the ditches were
deepened during the Civil War, and although Roman coins have been dug up
in large numbers[49], it is conceived that the camp was originally
British. On the height just above Gunwalloe Church, Cornwall, is a
“cliff castle”--one belonging to the Group A, as defined by the Congress
of Archaeological Societies in 1903[50]. Such earthworks are
inaccessible along a portion of their boundaries, on account of the
presence of cliffs or water. The site of the church of St Dennis, also
in Cornwall, is associated with a “hill castle[51],” which is assigned
to the Group B. In this class, the earthwork follows the contour of the
hill. Another contoured camp, much disturbed and defaced, is situated on
St Anne’s Hill, near Midhurst Church, Sussex[52], while a small circular
fortification may be seen to the west of the churchyard of South
Moreton, Berkshire[53]. Coldred Church, Kent, was built actually within
a fortress, conjecturally of Romano-British date[54], though the
elevation of the earthwork is rather exceptional for that period, being
about 370 feet above the sea-level, and 50 feet above the valley towards
the west. Again, at Kenardington, also in Kent, an earthwork of unknown
age, now much mutilated[55], surrounded the graveyard and part of the
neighbouring fields.
The so-called Dane’s Camp (Group B) at Cholesbury, Bucks., 600 feet
above the sea-level, encircles the church of St Lawrence with its
embankment[56]. Another St Lawrence, at West Wycombe, in the same
county, is built inside a ring earthwork (Group B), which crowns the
hill. This fort, probably of British construction, is remarkable for its
double-terraced defences, and for the manner in which it commands three
converging valleys[57]. A somewhat similar example was once visible at
Brownsover, near Rugby, where, a century ago, the church and village
were enclosed within elaborate entrenchments. These represented a
fortress, constructed on a ridge which overlooked the valleys of the
Avon and the Swift. The fort was probably prehistoric, although a
cinerary urn, found in the churchyard, was identified as Roman.
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