By the Ven. Archdeacon Macdonald. 137 



Mr. Estcourt. From him it was purchased by Mr. Holford whose 

 trustees sold it to the late Edward Francis Colston, Esq, whose 

 widow is the present proprietress. 



On the hill above, called Roundway Hill and Roundway Down, 

 there is an earthwork, commonly called Oliver's camp, from the 

 notion that Cromwell occupied it when his army or a portion of it 

 was in this part of the county, and surrounded, in 1645, the town 

 of Devizes. This little earthenwork is situated on the western ex- 

 tremity of the hill, upon a high point of Down projecting towards 

 the village of Rowde. It has an entrance from the Down, guarded 

 by a single rampart. On the other side it is rendered inaccessible 

 by nature. The whole area of the camp does not contain three 

 acres. It has not the appearance of a very old work, and though 

 not strictly of the usual form of a Roman encampment, yet as some 

 articles of Roman personal furniture have been found in the neigh- 

 bourhood, it was probably used by them as an exploratory camp 

 attached to the Station of Yerlucio. 



On this plain, since called King's Play Down, a battle took place 

 13th July 1643 between the Royalists commanded by Lord Wil- 

 mot and Sir Ralph Hopton, and the forces of the Parliament under 

 Sir William Waller; when the latter sustained a signal defeat. 

 The narrative may be found in Clarendon's History of the Rebel- 

 lion. 



On this Down a barrow was opened by Mr. Cunnington, and at five 

 and a half feet below the surface a skeleton was found in a fixed po- 

 sition, with its head towards the north, and lying on the left side. 

 This, according to the opinion of a distinguished medical member of 

 the Wiltshire Archaeological Society, was the skeleton of an Ancient 

 Briton, an old man. 1 In 1858, Mr. Cunnington made a second 

 investigation, and on this occasion the interment was found at the 

 western end of the barrow, and consisted of a deposit of burnt hu- 

 man bones and a small bronze dagger, which had been fastened to 

 its handle by three bronze rivets. The peculiarity of this inter- 

 ment was the fact that the bones were contained in a wooden chest 



^ee his account, Wiltshire Archaeological Magazine, vol. iii. p. 187. 



