ANCIENT DEFENSIVE EARTHWORK^ 



design, but is the result of the natural changes above described. But the 

 greatest destroyer of these interesting memorials of the past is undoubt- 

 edly man the agriculturist and the builder. A good farmer discovers 

 that the light rich soil in a mound or bank would make excellent material 

 with which to top-dress a clay field, and he forthwith digs into it and 

 carts it away. Again, a great bank and ditch may stretch across his corn- 

 lands and greatly impede the use of the plough or steam cultivator, and 

 he promptly sets to work to level the one into the other, with very sad 

 results for the archaeologist. Even in the absence of such measures on 

 the part of the occupier of the land, wherever the ground within the 

 area of an earthwork has been continously cultivated for hundreds of 

 years, as is often the case, the natural action of the plough tends to 

 flatten the ramparts and to wear away the sides of the ditches and 

 make them wider and shallower. So that in this way camps are not 

 only gradually being destroyed but their defences are meanwhile mate- 

 rially altered from their original form. In such a highly cultivated 

 county as Warwickshire the ancient earthworks have unfortunately 

 suffered greatly at the hands of the farmer ; this may be particularly 

 noted in the descriptions which follow of the remains at Beaudesert, 

 Beausale, Brownsover, Corley, Chesterton, Edgbaston, Mancetter, Lap- 

 worth, Solihull, Ratley, and elsewhere ; indeed, not only have several 

 of the works described by Hutton as extant a hundred years ago in the 

 neighbourhood of Birmingham apparently disappeared, but many of 

 those mentioned by Burgess as recently as 1875, have since become very 

 ill defined or have even entirely vanished. In Birmingham and other 

 towns building operations have of course obliterated many early works. 



Though frequently therefore much changed in appearance and often 

 but mere remnants of what they once were, the ancient defensive earth- 

 works of the county are fairly numerous and are also very varied both in 

 form and in choice of site ; they have probably been constructed by many 

 distinct peoples and at widely different dates. Unfortunately however 

 no systematic excavation has ever been undertaken in connection with 

 them, and without this it is quite impossible to determine the age of par- 

 ticular remains with accuracy. The adjoining county of Northampton 

 has been more happy in this respect, its celebrated camp known as Huns- 

 bury having been thoroughly explored by aid of the spade with very 

 notable results. 



Defensive earthworks have for convenience of description been 

 divided into certain easily recognizable types, based mainly upon their 

 form and situation. 1 Before any description of local examples is given, 

 it may be well therefore, for the clearer understanding of the subject, to 

 sketch briefly the characteristics of these varieties. 3 After this we shall 



1 Scheme for recording Ancient Defensive Earthworks^ pub. by Congress of Arch. Societies in Union 

 with the Society of Antiquaries in London, 1903. 



2 Epitomized in ' Early Defensive Earthworks,' by I. Chalkley Gould, in Brit. Arch. Assoc. Journ., 

 1901, to which article the writer is much indebted. 



347 



