48 



A remarkable feature in the physical history of Caplar hill must not be 

 passed by. It shares the liability to landslips, with all the hills around the large 

 Woolhnpe dome of Silurian rocks. The great di.sturbance of the upheaval seems 

 to have so shaken their stratification, that, by the gradual action of water, large 

 portions slide away from time to time. It is remarkable too, that the landslips 

 occur in the outer crust of the Silurian rocks, called Upper Ludlow rocks, as well 

 as in the Old Red Sandstone rocks adjoining, through which the Dome was forced. 

 Thus it was, doubtless, with the landslip which carried away part of St. Ethel- 

 bert's Camp on Backbury hill, at some unrecorded period ; the well-known land- 

 slip at Marcle, called "The Wonder," where twenty acres of land moved from 

 February the 17th to the 19th, in 157.'), is another example ; that at Claston Farm, 

 Dadnor hill, Dormington, which occurred on March l.Oth, 1844, when upwards of 

 three acres of land with forty oak trees standing upon it, moved two hundred 

 yards down, is another ; and others of lesser magnitude might be named. 



The following account of the landslip of Caplar hill is gi\ en in Mr. Cooke".s 

 History of Herefordshire, Vol. iii., p. 241. 



" This hill experienced a landslip of considerable extent in April, 1793, when 

 the ground sank fifty perpendicular feet, and then moved forward. It was wit- 

 nessed by a labourer, who, when working near a hedge, found the ground moving, 

 and at the same moment heard a loud noise resembling a distant hailstorm. Run- 

 ning from his work towards the river, across a narrow meadow, he observed with 

 alarm the sloping hill, with trees on it, moving gradually towards him, and this 

 progressive movement is represented to have continued from Thursday to the next 

 morning. It was a movement downwards, and in its progiess S.W. It has left 

 immense caverns in the earth, and moved stones there of the magnitude of five 

 or six tons. A number of trees were thrown down, some moved standing and 

 are now remaining so. A large old yew tree was moved nearly sixty feet, and is 

 now standing firm and uninjured. The jjeople assert that si.x acres of ground were 

 moved. Some part of the fallen earth reached the river, and had the fall continued 

 it must have materially affected the face of the stream." — OcnUeman's Marjazinc. 



The general progress of the Caplar hill landslip, lasting so many hours, closely 

 resembles that on Marcle hill, which moved for forty-two hours. Here, however, 

 the slip of rocks was Old Red Sandstone, whilst at St. Ethelbert's camp, and 

 at Marcle, and at Dormington it was the Upper Ltidlow rocks, of the Silurian 

 system, that were affected. 



The estate of Brockhampton was owned for many generations by an old yeo- 

 man family of Herefordshire, the Skyrmes. It was this family who produced and 

 gave their name to that valuable orchard fruit, Skyrme's Kernel. The grandson, 

 Thomas Skyrme Prothero, sold the estate in 1833 to another old Herefordshire 

 family, the Stallards. This family restored the church and planted the approach 

 to the Camp from the western side, and Mr. Stallard bought also VVoldbury, or 

 Caplar Camp, which had not before belonged to the estate, from the Powells of 

 Woolhope. To such old families, in times gone by, might well apply the oft- 

 quoted Kentish distich — 



" A gentleman of Wales, a knight of Cales, and a laird of the North Countree ; 

 But a yeoman of Kent, with his yearly rent, would buy them out all three." 



