Yarborough Camp

Yarborough Camp
Lincolnshire
Earthworks of Yarborough Camp
Type:	Hill fort
Location
Grid reference:	TA08111202
Location:	53°35’37"N, 0°22’5"W
History
	Built Iron Age
Information

Yarborough Camp is an Iron Age hill fort in Lincolnshire, found within a wood in the Lincolnshire Wolds. It is one of very few such forts that have been so identified in the Wolds.

The fort is a well preserved earthwork site, with significant archaeological within the camp, its earthen ramparts and infilled surrounding ditch. Finds include some of the Roman period, suggesting that it was re-used or continued in use into at least the 4th century AD.

Site and form

The fort was in its time defended by a substantial single bank and ditch, which remain. It lies on a slight spur on a hill on the northern side of the Kirmington Gap, about a mile from Croxton.

In 1776, Stukeley recorded that a large number of Roman coins were found here, many of the Emperor Licinius who ruled in the early 4th century , and he joined in the general opinion that Yarborough was a Roman fortification. In 1952 it was reported that there had been surface finds of a small quantity of pottery, interpreted as Romano-British, and a few flint scrapers inside the camp.

The fort is on the line of a presumed prehistoric trackway along the dip slope of the Wolds from Horncastle north to the Humber: this track was later modified and improved by the Romans, and is known locally as 'High Street'. The site also overlooks the Iron Age and Romano-British settlement of Kirmington, a mile to the south east.

The camp is nearly square in plan, being 85 yards east-west and 65 yards north-south internally, and formed by a substantial earthen and chalk bank with a mainly infilled ditch approximately 30 feet wide immediately around the outside. The banks today spread to 30 feet wide, standing 3 feet to 5 feet high.