Itinerarium curiosum (centuria I) : $b or, an account of the antiquities, and remarkable curiosities in nature or art, observed in travels through Great BritainStukeley, William
History
Itinerarium curiosum (centuria I) : $b or, an account of the antiquities, and remarkable curiosities in nature or art, observed in travels through Great Britain
Stukeley, William
Great Britain -- Antiquities -- Early works to 1800; Great Britain -- Description and travel -- Early works to 1800
As we go from Wilton to Stonehenge, between Grovely wood and Woodford
runs a ditch across the plain, with a high rampart southward: the ditch
is broad, and goes east and west. I take it to be one of the boundaries
of the _Belgæ_, which I call the third: the reason will hereafter
appear. On the east side of the Avon, by Great Dornford, is a very
large camp covering the whole top of a hill, of no determinate figure,
as humouring the height it stands on: it is made intirely without any
ditch, the earth being heaped up very steep in the nature of a parapet,
when dug away level at the bottom. I doubt not but this was a camp of
the Britons, and perhaps an _oppidum_, where they retired at night from
the pasturage upon the river, with their cattle: within it are many
little banks, carried strait and meeting one another at right angles,
square, oblong parallels and some oblique, as the meres and divisions
between ploughed lands; yet it seems never to have been ploughed: and
there is likewise a small squarish work intrenched, no bigger than a
large tent: these to me seem the distinctions and divisions for the
several quarters and lodgements of the people within; for I have, upon
the downs in Dorsetshire, often remarked the like, of too small a
compass to be ploughed fields. This camp has an aspect very old; the
prominent part of the rampart in many places quite consumed by time,
though the steep remains perfect; one being the natural earth, the
other factitious: it certainly has so much of the manner of Vespasian’s
camp, as induces one to think it an imitation. I know not whether we
ought to derive the name of it from the British _Og_, signifying the
hurdles and pens they fence their cattle in with, which perhaps stood
upon those meres, or little banks, to distinguish every man’s property.
Vespasian’s camp is within sight of it, a little higher up the river,
and on the other side: it is a famous camp, properly and by universal
consent attributed to him, called the Walls; well chose, being a high
piece of ground at a flexure of the river, which closes in an end and a
side of it: the other side has a broad and very deep valley along it,
and at the other end is the entrance: the whole hangs over the town of
Amsbury: the manner of this camp too consists mostly in a rampire, but
much more operose than that last mentioned; the form oblong: the road
to the town goes quite through it: it is high in the middle, and has a
barrow inclosed, but partly level; this I suppose originally Celtic, on
account of its vicinity to Stonehenge, therefore elder than the
camp. The east side of Vespasian’s camp is sufficiently guarded by the
precipice of the river. Further northwards, in the road from Ambsbury
to Marlborough, is the remain of another round camp, extremely old,
and almost obliterated: this is between Collinburn and Burbich, upon
a rising ground, seemingly British: and on the west side of the river
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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