By Mr. and Mrs. B. II. Cunnington. 55 



The Earthworks. 



Casterley Camp originally consisted of a great outer enclosure 

 and of a series of inner works, but the banks and ditches of these 

 latter have now almost entirely disappeared from the surface as a 

 result of many years of cultivation. Beyond the entrenchment 

 on the northern side of the camp there are traces of banks 

 which may have been outer works, or perhaps more probably this 

 appearance of -banks may be due only to the wearing down of 

 several move or less parallel tracks leading to the camp; there are 

 also still traces of the banks on either side of the sunken way 

 leading to the western entrance. 1 



Sir E. Colt Hoare visited Casterley Camp about the beginning 

 of the 19th century, when considerable traces of the inner works 

 were still visible; he had the camp surveyed and his plan 2 has 

 proved of the greatest possible value, not only as affording evidence 

 of the former existence of the inner, works, but also for showing 

 the original line of the outer rampart in several places where it 

 has since been defaced. So slight are the remaining surface traces 

 of the inner works that unless Sir 11. Colt Hoare had recorded them 

 it is quite likely that the knowledge of their former existence 

 would have been entirely lost. 



The site appears to have been known from time immemorial as 

 Casterley Camp, but the term "camp," as implying a place of 

 military strength or occupation is no doubt misleading. The term 



1 Sir R. Colt Hoare shows a bank and ditch on the south side of the 

 camp ending at the entrenchment. Possibly this Avas only a boundary line. 



2 Sir R. Colt Hoare describes Casterley thus : — " This earthen work bears 

 the strongest marks of originality, and none of the modern signs of inno- 

 vation. I consider it a British town, but not so populous as either of those 

 already noticed at Stockton and Groveley. Here we find no deep or mul- 

 tiplied ramparts, but a single ditch and vallum of no great elevation, 

 enclosing an area of about sixty acres. This camp from its elevation 

 commands a very distant view, and upon minute investigation, will be 

 found to be one of the most original and unaltered works of the British 

 aera, which our country, amidst numerous antiquities of a similar nature, 

 can produce." Ancient Wilts, South, 177. This was written after more 

 than one visit to the site, and when it was already under cultivation, but 

 he certainly saw it before it was cultivated, for he wrote under date of 

 Oct. 10th, 1807 : — " Casterley much changed in its appearance having been 

 lately ploughed up," " Nunc seges est ubi Troja fuit." Extracts from a 

 Note-Book ; Wilts Arch. Mag., xxii., 237. 



