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The Camp and its entrenchments are now almost covered with a forest of 
timber. Up the shoulder of the hill, on the western side, is an avenue of pollard 
oaks of some three or four centuries’ growth, and since they are likely to remain a 
feature of the hill for some centuries to come, their circumference is here given. 
There are seven trees on each side, those on the right side, beginning from below, 
measure, respectively, 12ft. lin., 9ft. 1lin., 7ft. 4in., 8ft. 10in., 9ft. 3in., 9ft. Sin., 
and 9ft. 6in. ; and those on the left side, beginning from below, measure 9ft. 7in., 
12ft. 3in., 1ift. 6in., 9ft. Sin., 9ft. 3in., 10ft., and 12ft. 3in., taken at from three to 
to four feet from the ground, where the circumference is smallest. 
The early history of the hill and its entrenchments is involved in obscurity. 
It is generally believed to have been originally a British Camp, and it is thought 
also that there was a British town in the valley below. It is quite possible, and 
even probable, that both surmises are correct, though there is no proof whatever 
that it was so, and, if so, the British names of the town, the Camp, and the hill 
are lost in the obscurity of the past. There can be no doubt that the Camp was 
afterwards occupied and maintained by the Romans for some three centuries, and 
that the great strength of the embankments is due to them, if they did not origin- 
ally construct them, as some authorities believe. The Romans also built the town 
in the plain below, on the site of the British town, as some think, and it is beyond 
question that the Camp and the town together formed the great central Military 
and Civil Station for the subjugation and management of this district by the 
Romans. 
There is so much confusion, so little real history, with reference to the 
struggles and party warfare that took place during the two or three centuries after 
the departure of the Romans, that any attempt to connect the sequence of events, 
or even of rulers, may readily be called in question. There is some reason to 
believe that this Camp was occupied for a considerable time by the Saxons, under 
Creda, the first king of the Mercians, and this inference is supported by the name 
it now bears of ‘‘ Credenhill,” or ‘‘ Creda’s hill,” for which indeed there is no other 
known derivation. Creda, it is surmised, destroyed and burnt the town, and 
occupied the Camp itself with his forces. The Saxons are believed by tradition to 
have made, or very much widened, the inner ditch of the Camp, possibly to 
strengthen the embankments with the earth removed. The roads made in all 
directions through the country, from this centre, would be equally convenient to 
the Saxons as they had been to the Romans who formed them. 
Very little remains of any kind have ever been found in the Camp, or upon 
the hill, but when the Camp is drained, which it so sadly wants, and when the 
leaf mould of so many centuries is trenched to mix with lime, as it probably soon 
will be, in preparation for rhododendrons, and when the pond, too, is cleaned out, 
the greatest care will no doubt be taken to preserve all remains that may be found, 
and which may possibly afford more direct evidences of its occupation and history 
than exist at present. The most likely place, however, to find remains of its 
former occupants, would be on the upper part of the mound, where the surface is 
very irregular, and where pits or hollow places are seen. It is quite possible, nay, 
