23 



Mr. Chapman, of the Free Library, who enjoys a hunt of this kind very much, 

 has searched the archives of the library in vain, and drawn blank every cover. 

 However, in that valuable repertory of local lore, the Records of the Woolhope 

 Club, there is a lengthened notice of it. The Club visited the camp in the 

 year 1S69, when a very interesting paper was read by Mr. Edwin Lees, and was 

 afterwards published in the Transactions.* Mr. Lees believes it to have been 

 "the site of a British town rather than of a military station," since it exactly 

 bears out the description in the Commentaries of Julius Caesar, "the Britons call 

 by the name of town, a place in the fastnesses of the woods, surrounded by 

 mound and trench, and calculated to afford them a retreat and protection from 

 hostile invasion. " The name of Wall hills is not uncommon. In Herefordshire 

 there are several other instances, as Wall hiUs near Thornbury, Wall hill near 

 Orleton, Cox-wall KnoU, Sutton walls near Hereford, Wal-ford near Goodrich, 

 Wall-field near Cradley, and there are many others elsewhere. Mr. Lees derives 

 the names from "Wealas" or "Wales," and thinks that "Waals" or "Wall 

 Hills " were so called " not from the walls upon them, but from the people, who 

 had there their habitations," a very dubious conclusion certainly. 



Mr. Allies, author of the Folk lore of Worcestershire, thought the camp to 

 have been originally British and subsequently occupied as a Roman station. 



Mr. Flavell Edmunds derives the name through the Britons from " Vallum," 

 with the " V " pronounced " W," which is far more probable, or from " gwawl," 

 meaning a trench, and at a later period a wall. He thinks it wholly unproved 

 that it ever was a British town. "Not only has the camp no British name, but 

 there is not a single British named place within some miles. Hill and dale aUke, 

 all round it, are thoi-oughly Saxon in name." He looked u\Kin the camp "as one 

 of the chain of late British fortifications, constructed near the Roman road from 

 Magna eastwards, as a defence against the Anglian invaders, or perhaps even as 

 late as Athelstan's time " (a.d. 925, 941). 



In Mr. Edmunds's work. Traces of History in the Names of Places, it is stated 

 that whenever the words " Hils " with one "l,"or "Hills" with two "rs"isused 

 for a single hill, the name is derived from Ella, or ^Ua, King of Mercia and 

 Northumbria, so that "Wall HUls " would thus mean "the entrenchments of 

 jElla." This King ^lla or the tribe of Engles called "Deira" waged bitter war- 

 fare with another tribe of Engles, still further north, called the Bernicians, \mder 

 their king, .^thelric. The prisoners on both sides were slain in cold blood, or 

 were sold into slavery. Boeda relates one of the most memorable stories in our 

 history of one of these groups of slaves. It is thus given by Green in his Making 

 of England. "As the slaves stood in the market-place at Rome, it may be the 

 great Forum of Trajan which, still in its decay, recalled the glories of the Imperial 

 city, their white bodies, their fair faces, their golden hair, were noticed by a 

 Roman deacon who passed. 'From what country do these slaves come?' Gregory 

 asked of the trader who brought them. The slave-dealer answered ' They are 

 English ' (or as the word ran in the Latin form it would bear at Rome, ' They are 



* Woolhope Transactions, 1869, p. 9. 



