A HISTORY OF WARWICKSHIRE 



up at the bottom. A very careful survey made in 1822 by Mr. Edward 

 Pretty, then drawing-master at Rugby School, and here reproduced, 1 

 shows the ditches at that time to have been upon an average less than 

 100 feet across, and they would doubtless be correspondingly deeper ; 

 even then there were no signs of the inner rampart remaining ; this in 

 all likelihood has been thrown down at some time or other into the 

 ditch, for the easier cultivation of the field. 



The ancient Fosse Way, in its course across the midlands, passes 

 through the western half of this camp ; it enters near the corner, and 

 quits the interior through the north-east side. Within and just outside 

 the area of the camp, it is in its present shape merely a trackway 7^ feet 

 wide, whereas, a little further north and south, it again becomes a 10 

 foot road, raised 3 feet above the level of the surrounding ground, and 

 with wide ditches on either side, 6 feet in depth from the surface of the 

 highway. 



The position of Chesterton camp, placed as it is upon the Fosse 

 Way, much resembles that of Mancetter, hereafter described, upon the 

 Watling Street ; with the exception, that in the first case the oblong lies 

 across, and in the second, parallel with, the road. 



Dugdale records that ' within the Compasse ' of the camp ' divers 

 old Coynes ' were ' digg'd up ' ; and since his time many pieces of 

 Roman money, as well as fragments of Roman pottery, have been found 

 in the fields near.' Whether this earthwork is actually Roman or not, 

 only excavation upon the site can finally determine ; the arguments, for 

 and against, at present, are fully set forth in the article on ' Romano- 

 British Warwickshire.' 



CHESWICK GREEN. See Tanworth. 



CHURCHOVER (4 miles north of Rugby). An interesting and well pre- 

 served little moated mount castle of class D is to be seen in this parish, about 



half a mile south of Coton House. Proceed- 

 ing from Brownsover along the Lutterworth 

 road, it lies in the middle of the second field to 

 the east of the highway, just after passing the 

 third milestone from Rugby. The remains 

 consist of a low circular artificial hill, measur- 

 ing about i 50 feet in diameter at its base, with 

 a flat top about 70 feet across ; it is surrounded 

 by a ditch, in which water still lies at the 

 south-east side. 



The Ordnance Survey map calls this 

 mount a tumulus ; there is an undoubted sepul- 

 chral mound here, once opened by Mr.Bloxam, 

 which lies in the spinney beside the high-road a few hundred yards to the 

 north-west ; but it is much smaller than the mount above described, and 

 has no encircling ditch. 3 



1 Preserved in Dugdale's Wane. (Hamper's copy), p. 340. 



Dugdale's Wana. p. 340 ; Turner's Sbaki. Land, pp. 301-3. a O.S. Map 25 in., 1883. 



368 



CHURCHOVER 



SCALE OF FEET 



too 200 



Zoo 



