Camps

CAMPS.

I find that every camp seems to have several leys over it, and that these usually come over the earthworks, not the camp centre, as with moats. Also that camps almost always show signs of part of their earthworks being tumps. At Sutton Walls are four unmistakable tumps, in one of which an interment was found, and in another

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[paragraph continues] (Plate XIV.) the Club at its visit saw the bases of two masonry columns of Roman construction, the use of which seemed a mystery. I feel certain they were columns built by Roman surveyors for exact sighting.

Standing on the highest part of Dinedor Camp earthworks, the towers of Hereford Cathedral and All Saints' Church can be seen exactly in a line to the stand point.

The camp plans in past Transactions show signs of tumps in most camps. It is impossible to assume that leys (sighted between two mountains) should in the scores of instances exactly fall upon the earthworks of camps previously built on sites selected solely for defence. The leys came first, and the present camp was then merely the site of two or more tumps. There came a period of organised raids and war, and where a group of tumps gave the first elements of defensive works, they were joined by earthworks into a complete enclosure for defence. Here again sighting settled the sites of camps. Hereford Castle Green with Hogg's Mount the only remaining sighting tump, others (as at the Russian gun) being now levelled, is an example. Many groups of tumps, never developed into camps but sufficiently near to be so, are to be found on the map.

I found Caplar Camp to have so many leys over it as to seem the Clapham Junction of ancient trackways in that district. It may be that in a few cases of lofty camps (as Croft Ambury and Herefordshire Beacon) they form terminals of sighting lines, but in almost all cases the leys pass over them.