448 APPENDIX ON THE TOPOGRAPHY OF SIGWELL. 



APPENDIX ON THE TOPOGRAPHY OF SIGWELL. 



BY MAJOR-GENERAL A. LANE FOX. 



As it was my particular function during these excavations to 

 make the survey and take the measurements, a few words on the 

 topography of the neighbourhood of Sigwell may be desirable. 



Leaving Professor Rolleston to superintend the digging, I set 

 about examining the surroundings. At the distance of a mile in a 

 south-west direction we have Cadbury, a large British camp, which, 

 like most earthworks that are distinctly British, occupies with its 

 entrenchments the whole brow of the hill on which it is situated ; 

 it is one of those positions which the Bev. F. Warre, in his excel- 

 lent classification of the British camps of this district 1 , describes as 

 fortresses pure and simple, having no interior divisions, as distin- 

 guished from other works which, having a kind of keep and some- 

 times one or two fortified interior partitions, he considers to be 

 fortified towns rather than positions of a purely military character. 

 It is on a detached spur from the line of hills which are shown on 

 the right of the accompanying rough sketch 2 , and which run north 

 and south, forming the eastern boundary of the Yeo Valley, and the 

 source of many of its tributary streams. To the west of Cadbury 

 the ground is low for some distance. On the east, the summit of 

 the hills is occupied by table-land, the margin of which is defined 

 in the sketch 2 by Littleton Hill, Pen Hill, Cham well, Sigwell, 

 and Gurt, and between this range and Cadbury is the long east- 

 ward-stretching valley of Whitcomb, with its central stream rising 

 in Sigwell and joining another stream from the summit of Charn- 

 well, below Cadbury Hill, from which point it flows westward by 

 Sutton Montis and ultimately into the Yeo. Paddock Hill is 

 another detached hill, belonging to this range and situated between 

 Cadbury and Gurt. 



The position of the twin-barrow first opened and described by 

 Professor Bolleston on the table-land is shown on the sketch, which 

 it must be observed has no pretension to accurate detail, and is 



1 'Proceedings of the Somersetshire Archaeological and Natural History Society,' 

 vol. v. p. 38. 



2 This account of the Topography of Sigwell is illustrated in the original paper in 

 the ' Journ. Anth. Inst.' vol. viii, by three plates. 



