Page:VCH Berkshire 1.djvu/355

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ANCIENT EARTHWORKS LETCOMBE REGIS, LETCOMBE CASTLE OR SEGSBURY CAMP. This lies upon the top of the Downs overlooking the Vale of White Horse to the north, and on the south the valleys converging towards the Lam- bourn at Sheffbrd. Strangely enough it does not stand on the highest part of the ridge, as the ground on the east is sufficiently above it to command the camp completely. The Ridge-way Road runs 100 yards to the south of it. The defences consist of a vallum with a fosse outside, and at the north-west corner are traces of an outside vallum. The principal gate- way is to the east, but there are two others, though perhaps of more modern construc- tion, on the north and south-west. Hearne, who de- scribes the camp in one of his diaries, mentions that a great number of very large red flints were in the banks of the trench, where they formed a wall, but that many of them were being removed in his time for building pur- poses. * In the vallum to the south Dr. Phene found in 1871 a coni- cal sarson stone about 1 8 inches high, stand- ing upright upon a slab and five or six large flints. Beneath this was found a cist, the walls of which were formed of flints, and the floor of a flat slab of stone. In the cist were fragments of human bones, some flint scrapers, the remnants of what appeared to be an umbo of a shield, and a small fragment of an urn or drinking cup. 2 LONGWORTH, CHERBURY CAMP. This camp, unlike the others, lies on comparatively low ground, yet in the form of its construction it differs but little from others of the same type. It is oval or egg-shaped in form, and has been surrounded by three successive valla with fosses without each, but it is only to the north-west that the whole series is to be found complete, as all but the inner vallum LETCOMBE CASTLE, LETCOMBE REGIS. i Hearne's Diaries, vol. 74 (1717), p. 88. Cough's Camden, i. 225. Lysons, Mag. Brit. i. 213, 313. ' Davey, Wantage Past and Present, 2-5. Trans. Newbury Dist. Field Club, i. 183 ; ii. 176. 26l