424 Oliver's Camp, Devizes. 



The ditch was cleared out from its termination on the northern 

 side of the entrance for a distance of 30ft. This work alone 

 occupied a whole week, with four and sometimes five men em- 

 ployed, the depth of the ditch adding very much to the labour of 

 clearing it. 



The original depth of the ditch was from 13ft. to 14ft. It had 

 become filled up to a height of lift, to ll|ft. It was from 18ft. 

 to 20ft. wide at the top and from 2ft. to 3ft. wide at the bottom.^ 



The ditch grew slightly narrower and was rounded off at its 

 termination, where the sides were perpendicular. From this 

 rounded end, as it extended northwards along the outer edge of 

 the rampart, it developed ledges along its sides, and it was not 

 cut with the same regularity that appeared in the section at " C." 

 The filling-in of this eastern ditch, both here and at section " C," 

 showed the same peculiar and unusual features. The numerous 

 ditch sections illustrated and described by General Pitt-Kivers in 

 his four volumes of Excavations show nothing similar to it. For 

 the first 5ft. from the bottom upwards the filling-in consisted of 

 the usual chalky silt, intermingled — specially near the bottom — 

 with large lumps of chalk such as the rampart is built of, and 

 which no doubt rolled off into the ditch before the rampart had 

 become coated with turf. Above this chalky silt, and about 1ft. 

 in thickness, was a very distinct dark band of tenacious clayey 

 material, full of snail shells, and having the appearance of an old 

 surface. From immediately above this dark seam the ditch was 

 filled in with a loose gravelly chalk rubble, of the same character 

 throughout, right up to the present turf. 



The only reasonable explanation of these unusual features seems 

 to be that the upper portion of the ditch must at some period 

 have been purposely filled in. In the first place it is difficult to 

 see how such a large accumulation of material could have found 

 its way into this ditch by natural causes alone, and secondly, why 

 there should have been a pause in this natural process long enough 

 to account for the dark seam with the snail shells. The chalky 



' The alternative figures allow for variation in measurement at different 

 points. 



