Proposed project at Caesar’s Camp and surrounding area, Farnham SU835500
Straddling the Surrey/Hampshire border, amid an area much quarried and disfigured by military works, Caesar’s Camp is recorded as being an Iron Age multivalate hillfort. (Scheduled
Not much work has yet been done to characterise it apart from a mention by JP Williams Freeman in his work of 1915, by Hogg (1975) and in an account of an excavation by
With extensive views to the south, north and east, it tops an irregular promontory on the Bagshot series of sands and gravels. Jutting out to the north-east from the gravel plateau, at an elevation of about 200m above sea level, the fort covers an area of about 11 hectares. The north and eastern sides of the hillfort are steeply scarped and there is evidence of extensive slumping. A series of banks and ditches exist on the other sides. The site is criss-crossed by roads and tracks.
To the west of the fort are 7 recorded BA burial mounds. 3 others have been recorded but destroyed by quarrying.
Recent work has taken place to survey the surviving burial mounds and will be reported at a later date.
The proposal is to:
· Survey obvious areas of erosion around the hillfort and compare to the 1848 and 1864 survey maps. A damage report has been requested and will be submitted to EH.
· Check the accuracy of key features depicted on the above maps and re-survey where appropriate.
· Try magnetometry and resistivity to geophiz cleared areas within the fort, firstly to asses the viability of these techniques in this context and secondly to look for any dating evidence and evidence of occupation.
· To identify and ascertain the position of the actual entrance to the fort
Work will start in the new year when the undergrowth is low.
J Blatchford and R Alexander email: caesars_camp@yahoo.co.uk
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