Wychbury Hill

Who put Bella in the Wych Elm?

Those visiting who pass the otherwise anonymous obelisk next to the fort might notice the old graffiti "Who put Bella in the Witch Elm?" painted on the base.

Rather macabrely, it relates to the discovery by four children in 1943 of the skeletonised remains of a women placed inside a tree in nearby Hagley Wood (not the hillfort, thankfully). The murder remains unsolved.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_put_Bella_in_the_Wych_Elm%3F

Details of hill-fort on Pastscape

(SO 91908180) Wychbury Hill (TI) Camp (NR).

Wychbury Camp is a contour, multi-vallate hill-fort with complex defences enclosing 7 1/4 acres and an annexe of 5 1/2 acres on the south.

The entrances on the north-east and south-west sides of the fort are formed by incurved ramparts, the latter being approached by a wide track bounded by ditches. An excavation by E B Marten in 1884 produced two small bronze rings, since lost, but one of which was identified as an Early Iron Age terret by the British Museum.

Several Roman coins in adjacent fields may indicate Romano-British occupation. (Coin hoard also found nearby-see SO 98 SW 5).

The hill-fort has been badly damaged by tracks. Published survey (1:2500, 1923-4) has been revised.

Iron Age field system, Wychbury Hill. Wychbury Ring, an Iron Age bivallate hillfort, measures internally 250.0m east-west by 150.0m transversely.

The inner rampart is from 16.0m to 20.0m in width and up to 2.6m in height internally. It drops 6.0 to 8.0m to the foot of the inner ditch which is up to 10.0m in width and 1.7m in depth. The outer rampart is best preserved on the south side where it is 10.0m in width and rises from 2.0 to 3.0m from the outer ditch. The latter averages 10.0m in width and is up to 1.2m in depth. On the north side the inner ditch is silted up and the outer bank reduced to a lynchet-like slope. There are no traces of the outer ditch on the north west and north sides. The ramparts are boldly inturned at the entrances of the east and south west. The track with ditches leading to the latter entrance, referred to by Cantrill(2), is modern.

The 'annexe', also referred to by Cantrill, is non-existent. An old hollow-way, some 2.0m deep, 80.0m south of the hillfort, has been mistaken for outworks. A perambulation of the arable slopes below wooded Wychbury Hill produced no traces of an Iron Age field system. Several fields on the north east and south east sides contain traces of rig and furrow and in one field in particular, centred at SO 92158197, it is better preserved than elsewhere and the baulks, separating areas of rig running in differing directions, might have been mistaken for an Iron Age system when viewed from the hill-fort. (Aston (5))

Published 1:2500 survey 1969 revised.