206924
RODMEAD HILL
LATER PREHISTORIC ENCLOSURE
-4000 to 43
ST 82123593. Rodmead Hill. Prehistoric enclosure of possible Bronze Age or Iron Age Date. This consists of a sub rectangular or D shaped enclosure. The monument survives as an bank and outer ditch enclosing an area of 0.5ha. Scheduled (1998).
An irregular oval earthwork, with outer ditch and a slight additional ditch on the east side visible on air-photographs and confirmed by ground inspection. Colt Hoare stated that there was an entrance on the east. MOW records state that there is an entrance causeway on NE. He dug into it and turned up black earth and 'rude British' potsherds.It is visible on APs. (2-5)
The earthwork is of irregular 'D' shape and consists of a bank, now almost completely destroyed, and outer ditch enclosing an area of about 70 x 80 metres. There is an entrance in the E with a counterscarp to the ditch extending for about 40 metres southwards. Around this side, opposite the entrance, and between 20 and 50 metres from the main enclosure is a curvilinear outer-work of bank and ditch about 180m long. There are no apparently original breaks in this feature nor does it appear to have extended further in either direction.
Possibly BA, certainly pre-Roman. Divorced Survey (1:2500) reduced from RCHM survey at 1:500. (6)
This earthwork is generally as described by F1; the ditch measures 2.8m wide and 0.6m deep, and the bank, where extant, 2.5m wide and 0.2m high. There is an inturn, 4.0m wide and 0.2m deep, to the ditch on the southwest. The interior is level.
The outer-work has been reduced by ploughing, and although clearly visible as a crop-mark on OS air photographs (a), it is now barely discernible on the ground. (1970)
26-01-14