ANCIENT EARTHWORKS 



LETCOMBE REGIS, LETCOMBE CASTLE OR SEGSBURY CAMP. This lies 

 upon the top of the Downs overlooking the Vale of White Horse to 

 the north, and on the south the valleys converging towards the Lam- 

 bourn at Sheffbrd. Strangely enough it does not stand on the highest 

 part of the ridge, as the ground on the east is sufficiently above it to 

 command the camp completely. The Ridge-way Road runs 100 yards 

 to the south of it. 



The defences consist of a vallum with a fosse outside, and at the 

 north-west corner are traces of an outside vallum. The principal gate- 

 way is to the east, but 

 there are two others, 

 though perhaps of 

 more modern construc- 

 tion, on the north and 

 south-west. 



Hearne, who de- 

 scribes the camp in one 

 of his diaries, mentions 

 that a great number of 

 very large red flints 

 were in the banks of 

 the trench, where they 

 formed a wall, but that 

 many of them were 



being removed in his 

 time for building pur- 

 poses. * 



In the vallum to 

 the south Dr. Phene 

 found in 1871 a coni- 

 cal sarson stone about 

 1 8 inches high, stand- 

 ing upright upon a slab 

 and five or six large 

 flints. Beneath this was found a cist, the walls of which were formed 

 of flints, and the floor of a flat slab of stone. In the cist were fragments 

 of human bones, some flint scrapers, the remnants of what appeared 

 to be an umbo of a shield, and a small fragment of an urn or drinking 

 cup. 2 



LONGWORTH, CHERBURY CAMP. This camp, unlike the others, lies 

 on comparatively low ground, yet in the form of its construction it 

 differs but little from others of the same type. 



It is oval or egg-shaped in form, and has been surrounded by three 

 successive valla with fosses without each, but it is only to the north-west 

 that the whole series is to be found complete, as all but the inner vallum 



LETCOMBE CASTLE, LETCOMBE REGIS. 



i Hearne's Diaries, vol. 74 (1717), p. 88. Cough's Camden, i. 225. Lysons, Mag. Brit. i. 213, 313. 

 ' Davey, Wantage Past and Present, 2-5. Trans. Newbury Dist. Field Club, i. 183 ; ii. 176. 



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