410 Oliver's Camp, Devizes. 



only fair to add that he sums up against all three and strongly in 

 favour of Edington in Poldens near Bridgwater, Somerset.^ 



Certainly no evidence in favour of this site having been the scene 

 of strife between Saxon and Dane was forthcoming during the 

 recent excavations. The modern name of Oliver's Camp or Castle 

 seems to have arisen out of a popular tradition that Oliver 

 Cromwell occupied, if he did not actually build the camp. The 

 only foundation in fact for this tradition is that the battle of 

 Koundway Down was fought in 1643 on the adjacent downs, when 

 some of the combatants may have been posted close to, if not 

 actually within the boundary of the camp.'^ Cromwell himself was 

 not pi-esent on the occasion, but the fact that Cromwellian troops 

 fought on the neighbouring downs was quite enough to give rise 

 in the course of time to the popular association of the camp with 

 the name of the great man himself. 



The more ancient name was Eunway, Kundway, Eoundaway, or 

 in its modern form, Koundway Castle. It does not seem to have 

 been called Oliver's Camp much before the early part of the 

 nineteenth century.^ 



Nearly all the early writers speak of the camp as being on 

 Koundway Hill or on Koundway Down, whence presumably its 

 name of Koundway Castle. 



But it is a curious fact, and one that has given rise to some 

 confusion, that the name of Koundway is not now correctly given 

 either to the hill on which the camp stands, or to the immediately 



« " The Battlefield of Ethandune," by the Rev. C. W. "Whistler. Antiquary, 

 June and July, 1901. 



- " As for the neighbouring entrenchment, called Oliver's Camp, there is no 

 reason to suppose that it was the scene of any transaction during the war." — 

 Waylen's Hist, of Devizes, p, 174-5. Aubrey says " Sir WiUiam Waller 

 encamped his army here when he besieged Sir Ralph Hopton in Devizes. 



^ " A strong encampment usually called Roundaway Castle." — Britton's 

 Wiltshire, p. 434, 1814. " An ancient earthwork popularly called Oliver's 

 Camp." — Waylen's Chronicles of Devizes, p. 137, 1839. In 1814 on the first 

 Ordnance Survey Map it is called "Oliver's Camp." On Andrews' and 

 Dury's Top. Map of Wilts, 1773, it is marked as " Roundaway Castle ; in the 

 revised edition of 1810 it is " Roundway Castle," having dropped the " a." 

 In Gough's Camden, 1810, " Roundway Castle." 



