Images

Image of Caesar’s Camp (Bracknell) (Hillfort) by GLADMAN

Guess this is why I prefer my hill forts to be wooded.... The rampart follows the contours of the plateau, turning this way and that...

Image credit: Robert Gladstone
Image of Caesar’s Camp (Bracknell) (Hillfort) by GLADMAN

The height of the main bank is clear. A log lies in the ditch, with small outer bank to left.

Image credit: Robert Gladstone
Image of Caesar’s Camp (Bracknell) (Hillfort) by GLADMAN

Note the height of the inner rampart falling to the ditch bottom.

Image credit: Robert Gladstone
Image of Caesar’s Camp (Bracknell) (Hillfort) by GLADMAN

The outer bank is heavily wooded in places. But not as bad as some...

Image credit: Robert Gladstone
Image of Caesar’s Camp (Bracknell) (Hillfort) by GLADMAN

Looking down the main entrance through parallel banks to the north

Image credit: Robert Gladstone
Image of Caesar’s Camp (Bracknell) (Hillfort) by GLADMAN

Part of the superb ‘barbican’ earthworks protecting the main entrance to the north...

Image credit: Robert Gladstone
Image of Caesar’s Camp (Bracknell) (Hillfort) by GLADMAN

Could Caesar and his automaton muppets ever have left behind a construction so beautiful?

Image credit: Robert Gladstone

Articles

Folklore

Caesar’s Camp (Bracknell)
Hillfort

The camp is an Iron Age hillfort sited in woodland and the course of the Roman Road known as the Devil’s Highway runs Eat-West half a mile to the South. This might be the source of the phantom footsteps heard at the Camp one night during WWII by two women who lived in a house that has now been demolished. They were aware of what sounded like voices and soldiers marching, but nothing could be seen. On another occasion, one of the women also saw the ghost of a red-haired man standing by her bed.

Miscellaneous

Caesar’s Camp (Bracknell)
Hillfort

The hillfort was built around 700 BCE and was a northern outpost of the Atrebatic tribe, it shows no evidence of having been stormed by the Romans.

It consists of an inner bank, ditch and counterscarp with an extra ditch and bank around the southern ramparts where the approach to the fort is flatter.

The ramparts are breached in five places, only two (the east and west entrance) are thought to be original, corresponding to inturned ramparts. The southern entrance may have been created at the same time as the Queen Anne Gully (cut in 1702 for Queen Anne to ride through from Nine Mile Ride), the northern and north-eastern entrances are of unknown age.

There are several non-original earthworks inside the enclosure including the remains of a 19th Century Game-keepers cottage (now demolished), old gravel pits, and small hollows inside the southern ramparts possibly relating to the use of the area by Canadian and American troops during World War 2.

The enclosure was planted out with coniferous trees during the 1950’s which have now been cleared and replaced with heathland plants. Parts of the ramparts have also been cleared of deciduous trees and sown with grass to minimise erosion.

Source of information: “Ceasar’s Camp: Bracknell’s Iron Age Hillfort”, Berkshire County Council, April 1991.

Link

Caesar’s Camp (Bracknell)
Hillfort
ADS

The Transactions of the Berkshire Archaeological and Architectural Society (1879-80) describes musings on an afternoon excursion to the camp. Includes a plan of the excessively wiggly boundary.

[Thank you to GreenOak for the revised url. TMA Ed.]

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