Roborough Beacon Enclosure View all content for Roborough Beacon

Description of the site, on Roborough Down next to the Plymouth - Yelverton road (A386): Early Iron Age Camp. The camp is formed of circular earthworks; there is no evidence of any stone being used. The outer bank is 100 yards in diameter, the smaller one, or Keep, 100 feet across. To the south the inner bank is still further protected by a sickle-shaped breastwork or agger. The camp is approached by two embanked ways, one from the main road, the other going north east from the camp, crossing both the Buckland road and the main Plymouth-Tavistock road, and can be traced to the south-eastern end of the golf links. The inner bank has been heavily planted with hawthorns and may well have been used as a pound for stray animals. There is also a small secondary earthwork, 50 feet in diameter, across the road opposite the banked trench, and a long embankment. The camp was almost certainly used as a beacon; on Spry's 16th century map of Plymouth Leat it is marked as Rowben Beacon. The air photograph shows Saunders' map to be conventionalised. The inner enclosure, "The Keep", is not concentric with the outer rampart but lies to the east of its centre : within it appears to be two small circular enclosures with a rectangular enclosure against their north west sides. The "breastwork" appears to be earlier than the outer rampart and to have extended, formerly, to the west where there is a trace of a low bank. The "embanked trench" does not appear to extend beyond the road at SX 50676421.

Posted by thesweetcheat 22nd September 2013ce

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