26 



Mr. John Skip, the owner of the property, had cut out a small round shot from an 

 oak tree in or near the camp. It was probably but a passing skirmish, for there 

 is no record of any real engagement near it, written by a tumulus, nor does any 

 tradition exist to render it probable that any such event has occurred in later 

 times. 



The many centuries that have passed since the formation of Wall hills, has 

 blotted out such history as it may have had. The names of the victors and the 

 vanquished, if such there ever were, are alike lost and gone. Our county has enjoyed 

 since then so long a period of peaceful happiness, that the troublous times of the 

 past, when every man had to fight for himself, or was compelled to fight for others, 

 can scarcely now be realized. The region of sober history has passed, and it re- 

 mains only for the poets to imagine, and refer in fancy to those 



" Antlent times so Ions; forgot, 

 Of feuds whose memory is not ; 

 To manners long since changed and gone, 

 And chiefs who under the grey stone 

 So long have slept, that fickle fame 

 Has blotted from her scroll their name." — Scott, 



The President said they were much indebted to Dr. Bull for his interesting 

 paper, and to Mr. Lines for his excellent plan of the camp. He thought it would 

 be a very good thing for the Club to have plans of all the leading camps litho- 

 graphed for the Transactions. This work had never yet been done, and as time 

 went on it would become more and more diflBcult. There is a fine traverse and an 

 elaborate covered way opposite the eastern entrance, which he thought had not 

 been sufficiently noticed in the excellent paper just read. He himself believed the 

 camp was originally a British fortified town ; then that it was occupied and largely 

 altered by the Romans ; and that '.afterwards, probably, the Saxons lived there. 

 The Saxons, however, were not great at castrametation, and he doubted if the 

 strength of the works was due to them. He himself had found worked flints, and 

 British or Eomano-British pottery within the area of the camp, and this he re- 

 garded as very strong proof of its having been a British town. 



Captain Morgan, R.E., thought all earthworks had a distinctive meaning, and 

 would be formed with reference to the weapons employed in the attack and 

 defence. He would like to know the raison d'etre of the strong escarped bastion 

 on which they stood, and that should form some guide to the people who made it. 

 He did not think the British or the Romans made it, and therefore that they were 

 due to a later period. Masonry might be of any age, but earthworks had a dis- 

 tinctive meaning. 



The President thought the bastion, strengthened as it would be by a stockade, 

 would form a strong defence to the narrow covered entrance to the inner camp. 

 Not only would arrows be effectively used, but stones might be hurled on the 

 heads of the attacking foes. 



Mr. Wilson, of Malvern, made a few remarks in favour of the Saxon theory ; 

 and the Rev. Prebendary Phillott thought there was no evidence whatever to show 

 that the Saxons made their entrenchments. 



