Page:VCH Berkshire 1.djvu/350

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

A HISTORY OF BERKSHIRE "*".. of burnt corn, while a number of Roman coins have been dug up, and as many as 500 found in an earthenware jar. Some British pottery was also found, and a quan- tity of oyster shells. Black coal, like blacksmiths' clinkers, has been dug up round $S?^A*; the entrenchments, and badgers have scratched out fragments of bricks and tiles, while some old copper coins were found on the BADBURY HILL CAMP, GREAT COXWELL. north side of the ditch.' GREAT COXWELL, BAD- BURY HILL CAMP. This camp is in shape an irregular circle and lies on the top of Badbury Hill, overlooking the Vale of White Horse to the south, and a long stretch of low-lying ground to the Thames Valley on the north- west. The fortifications con- sisted originally of two valla with a fosse between them, but early in the nineteenth century the banks were levelled, so that now little remains but vestiges of the fosse on the south, and a faint escarpment on the other sides. Leland notices it as ' a great diche, wher a for- tresse or rather a campe of warre hath been, as some say, diked by the Danes as a sure camp.' * Aubrey calls it Binbury* while Gough, who cites the two last autho- rities, mentions that human bones and ' coals ' have been found in the north rampart/ CESAR'S CAMP, EASTHAMPSTEAD. Hist, of Newbury and its Environs (1839), 223-4. Hewitt, Hist, of Comfton, 70, 71. Trans. New- bury Dist. Field Club, i. 128, 9; iii. 251-4. The local tradition is that here stood a castle which was blown down one night. Leland, It. ii. 21. Man. Brit. Cough's Camden, i. 222. See also Lysons' Mag. Brit. i. 214. 256