Anstiebury Camp

Anstiebury Camp
Surrey
The fort, lost in the woods
Type:	Hill fort
Location
Grid reference:	TQ15344401
Location:	51°11’1"N, 0°21’4"W
Village:	Coldharbour
History
	Built Iron Age
Information

Anstiebury Camp is a sizable Iron Age hill fort in the Weald. It lies on the eastern slope of Leith Hill in Surrey, by Coldharbour.

The fort bears evidence of early occupation. It is multivallate, which is to say with more than one line of embanked defences, defined by boundaries consisting of two or more lines of closely set earthworks, which tells of a relatively late hill fort, constructed perhaps in the second and first centuries BC.

The whole enclosure covers approximately twelve acres. There is a triple rampart wall to the north and south-east where the ground is fairly level, a double terrace on the west and south where the ground is much steeper, and a single line of defences to the north-east. The entrance is mid-way along the eastern side, defined by a wide break in the main rampart.

Trenches dug in the southeast, the entrance, and a few other investigations in 1972-3 revealed that the front of the main rampart had been set against and into the edge of the associated ditch and revetted with massive, irregular blocks of sandstone. The conclusion was that the purpose was to resist sling warfare due to the form and width, with rounded pebbles, foreign to the Greensand Ridge, being frequently found in the areas excavated. The archaeologist also considered that the entrance and the defences to the north of it were never completed, possibly linked with the deliberate demolition of the main rampart revetment, and possibly coinciding with Caesar's invasions of Britain.

The site was re-occupied in the Roman period, probably at least a century after it was originally abandoned.

The line of the Roman road now known as Stane Street, running from Londinium to Noviomagus Reginorum, passes close by, beneath the fort.

Outside links

• Megalithic Portal: Anstiebury Camp