By the Rev. Canon J. U. Jackson, F.S.A. 351 



estate to George Monk, Duke of Albemarle : leaving Hyde with 

 the shadow o£ Clarendon, but not the substance. 



Downton. 



The last place on our tour to which I have to call your attention 

 is Downton. There is here a most remarkable earthwork, in some 

 respects wholly unlike any other. Earthworks are most frequently 

 to be met with on the tops of high hills : but this is almost on a 

 level with the river Avon : or, rather, it occupies ground that slopes 

 upwards from the river. The general shape is that of the horseshoe, 

 opening towards the river on the south side. Near the middle there 

 is a mound, and three more mounds at the termination of one o£ 

 the long ridges or banks. These ridges (one of them 250 yards 

 long) are separated from one another by very deep gullies. The 

 whole work covers a very large space : several hundred yards long 

 and broad ; and it is impossible to embrace the entire plan at one 

 glance, owing to the number of trees. Looking attentively at this 

 very curious place one is puzzled by the oddity of the situation and 

 shape, supposing it to have been purposely made for a military 

 fortress. It is hardly likely that engineers would have fixed upon 

 a site so comparatively low, when there were so many elevated hills to 

 choose from ; though they might be tempted to use it if they should 

 find it, as it were, ready-made, and all the digging and banking done 

 by Nature. I think this was the case, if, indeed, it ivas ever a military 

 stronghold at all. If you should see the place you would observe 

 how gradually the outer bank sweeps downwards with a gentle 

 curve : how it dies away, as it were, into the flat. No military 

 engiueer would ever finish off an earthwork in such a fashion as 

 that. It was more probably done by the same geological agent 

 that produced all those smoothly-formed curves and hollows, those 

 basins and shelves (lynchets they are called) that are so frequently 

 found along the sides of the chalk downs. It is my own opinion 

 that Downton works were originally formed by the action of water. 

 Remember that the whole of the present surface of our country, if 

 stripped of its outer skin of grass, was once the muddy bottom of 

 the ocean : that all our undulations of hill and dale were shaped by 



a a a 



