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<< Our Photo Pages >> Sinodun Camp - Hillfort in England in Oxfordshire

Submitted by Anne T on Monday, 15 February 2021  Page Views: 24560

Iron Age and Later PrehistorySite Name: Sinodun Camp Alternative Name: Wittenham Clumps, Castle Hill, Sinodun Hills, Round Hill
Country: England County: Oxfordshire Type: Hillfort
Nearest Town: Wallingford  Nearest Village: Little Wittenham
Map Ref: SU5694592434  Landranger Map Number: 164
Latitude: 51.627848N  Longitude: 1.178728W
Condition:
5Perfect
4Almost Perfect
3Reasonable but with some damage
2Ruined but still recognisable as an ancient site
1Pretty much destroyed, possibly visible as crop marks
0No data.
-1Completely destroyed
4 Ambience:
5Superb
4Good
3Ordinary
2Not Good
1Awful
0No data.
4 Access:
5Can be driven to, probably with disabled access
4Short walk on a footpath
3Requiring a bit more of a walk
2A long walk
1In the middle of nowhere, a nightmare to find
0No data.
4 Accuracy:
5co-ordinates taken by GPS or official recorded co-ordinates
4co-ordinates scaled from a detailed map
3co-ordinates scaled from a bad map
2co-ordinates of the nearest village
1co-ordinates of the nearest town
0no data
3

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SumDoood would like to visit

NDM visited on 1st Feb 2023 - their rating: Cond: 4 Amb: 5 Access: 5

SolarMegalith visited on 3rd Mar 2012 - their rating: Cond: 4 Amb: 4 Access: 4

TheCaptain have visited here

Average ratings for this site from all visit loggers: Condition: 4 Ambience: 4.5 Access: 4.5

Sinodun Camp
Sinodun Camp submitted by TheCaptain : Castle Hill Iron Age Hillfort, Wittenham Clumps, Oxfordshire. SU570925 View of the fortifications on the southwestern side of Castle Hill. (Vote or comment on this photo)
At Wittenham, near Didcot, two prominent hills known locally as the Clumps overlook the river Thames, just across the river from Dorchester-on-Thames. The southerly 'Clump', Castle Hill, is an Iron-Age hillfort. This page also covers the wider Wittenham Clumps area, including Round Hill which is not a specific archaeological site, although the whole area is rich with remains from the Bronze Age to modern times.

The site was featured on Time Team. For details of the excavations in 2003 see here.

Update May 2017: The Northern Antiquarian (TNA) features a page on this hill fort - see their entry for Castle Hill, Little Wittenham, Oxfordshire, which gives directions for finding this fort, together with an aerial photograph from 1932 and a brief archaeology and history.

More information can also be found on Pastscape Monument ID 238126 and Historic England List Entry 1006302 (plan only).

Page originally by Vicky.

Note: ‘Astonishing’ dig reveals domestic life in the iron age, more details in the comments on our page
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Sinodun Camp
Sinodun Camp submitted by theSongofFfraed : A late summer view of Wittenham Clumps from St. Marys Garsington. (Vote or comment on this photo)

Sinodun Camp
Sinodun Camp submitted by TheCaptain : Castle Hill Iron Age Hillfort, Wittenham Clumps, Oxfordshire. SU570925 View of Castle Hill looking northwest along the ridge of the Sinodun Hills from Brightwell Barrow. (Vote or comment on this photo)

Sinodun Camp
Sinodun Camp submitted by NDM : View from Brightwell Barrow (Vote or comment on this photo)

Sinodun Camp
Sinodun Camp submitted by camperman : Sinodun Camp viewed from the north overlooking the Thames valley to the north and east. (Vote or comment on this photo)

Sinodun Camp
Sinodun Camp submitted by NDM : Summer solstice sunrise, wittenham clumps hill fort, Oxfordshire

Sinodun Camp
Sinodun Camp submitted by camperman : The main causewayed entrance through the counter scarp, ditch and rampart.

Sinodun Camp
Sinodun Camp submitted by camperman : Sinodun Camp from the south west with the main entrance located in the south east corner.

Sinodun Camp
Sinodun Camp submitted by camperman : Sinodun Camp viewed from the west, a fine example of a univallate contour fort.

Sinodun Camp
Sinodun Camp submitted by coypu : Taken a couple of years ago, a view of the castle mound. from a height where it's too low for the parachute.....

Sinodun Camp
Sinodun Camp submitted by theSongofFfraed : A winter view of Wittenham Clumps from St. Marys, Garsington. (Almost) looking along the St. Michael line. The Michael and Mary meet on Sinodun Hill (the one on the left).

Sinodun Camp
Sinodun Camp submitted by Parns : Wittenham Clumps

Sinodun Camp
Sinodun Camp submitted by Parns

Sinodun Camp
Sinodun Camp submitted by Parns : Information board

Sinodun Camp
Sinodun Camp submitted by Parns : Wittenham Clumps

Sinodun Camp
Sinodun Camp submitted by Parns : Looking south from Castle Hill.

Sinodun Camp
Sinodun Camp submitted by Parns : Closeup of the sizeable ditch and rampart.

Sinodun Camp
Sinodun Camp submitted by Parns : Wittenham Clumps

Sinodun Camp
Sinodun Camp submitted by Parns

Sinodun Camp
Sinodun Camp submitted by Parns : The north face of Castle Hill.

Sinodun Camp
Sinodun Camp submitted by Parns : Wittenham Clumps

Sinodun Camp
Sinodun Camp submitted by Parns

Sinodun Camp
Sinodun Camp submitted by Parns : Wittenham Clumps. Spring flowers.

Sinodun Camp
Sinodun Camp submitted by Parns : Wittenham Clumps. In the woods.

Sinodun Camp
Sinodun Camp submitted by Parns : Looking towards the north.

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"Sinodun Camp" | Login/Create an Account | 9 News and Comments
  
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High-end Iron Age smithy unearthed in Oxfordshire by Andy B on Sunday, 28 January 2024
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‘Forging new history’: high-end iron age smithy unearthed in Oxfordshire

An iron age workshop, where blacksmiths were forging metal about 2,700 years ago, has been discovered in Oxfordshire, complete with everything from bellows protectors to the tiny bits of metal that flew off as the red hot iron was hammered into shape.

Radiocarbon tests date it between 770BC and 515BC, during the earliest days of ironworking in Britain. From about 800BC, the art of forging iron became widespread in the British Isles for tools and weapons and the iron age takes its name from the mastery of this metal.

Archaeologists told the Guardian they had been “completely blown away” by the early dates and the evidence. This was no ordinary smithy, but a highly skilled producer of large and high-end iron artefacts, including everything from swords to chariot wheels.

The discoveries include the footprint of the blacksmith building and internal structures, with evidence of a specialised hearth and iron bar, from which artefacts were made. There is also an intact tuyere, which would have channelled air into the hearth, while also acting as a buffer to protect the bellows from the extreme heat of the flames.
More at www.theguardian.com/science/2024/jan/28/high-end-iron-age-smithy-oxfordshire-blacksmith
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‘Astonishing’ dig reveals domestic life in the iron age by davidmorgan on Sunday, 14 February 2021
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When archaeologists began excavating land near the iron age hillfort at Wittenham Clumps, a famous Oxfordshire landmark, they were hopeful of unearthing something of interest because the area has been occupied for more than 3,000 years. But nothing prepared them for the excitement of discovering an extended iron age settlement, with the remains of more than a dozen roundhouses dating from 400BC to 100BC – as well as an enormous Roman villa built in the late third to early fourth century.
From The Guardian.
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The Wittenham Clumps by Andy B on Friday, 16 February 2018
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The Wittenham Clumps are a well-known local landmark, consisting of two thickets atop a hill of two summits. The southern one, known also as Castle Hill, has a well-defined ditch and rampart, dating from at least the Iron Age, but a fort was sited here during the Bronze Age. They were a favourite spot of the British painter Paul Nash, who painted the site many times.

http://www.earthtrust.org.uk/Places/at-little-wittenham/Wittenham-Clumps.aspx

http://www.nashclumps.org/index.html

With thanks to Parns for the links
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Re: Sinodun Camp by Anne T on Tuesday, 23 May 2017
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The link to the Time Team web site no longer works so I've deleted it from the main body of the text. For reference, the link was: Time Team website. (archive link)
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Re: Wittenham Clumps by AngieLake on Sunday, 22 November 2015
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A charming description of Wittenham Clumps appears in 'The Green Road into the Trees' by Hugh Thomson, who writes about his journey along the Icknield Way from St Catherine's Chapel near Abbotsbury in Dorset to the site of Seahenge in Norfolk.

Here's an excerpt:

"There is a kestrel over the skyline, hovering just a fraction above the horizon so that its wings are parallel with it. And then we rise higher up the hill and it is lost against the grasses.
I'm climbing Wittenham Clumps with my old friend Robin Buxton. As we get higher, I begin to feel like a kestrel myself. The view is breathtaking. From these two hills beside the Thames, one can see back towards the Uffington White Horse in one direction and on up the Icknield Way towards the ridge line of the Chilterns the other. Directly below, the Thames winds from Wallingford around the old West Saxon centre of Dorchester, with its barrows and abbey.
No surprise that one of the twin hills that make up Wittenham Clumps should have been another Iron Age hill-fort, the latest in the line that I've been tracing from the west, now meeting its natural barrier at the Thames. In the eighteenth century the hilltops were wooded over, for picturesque effect: an effect that was still admired in the early twentieth century, when Paul Nash returned here frequently for a series of landscape portraits. The two prominent hills above the river are a landmark for miles, along with Didcot Power Station."

It's an ideal book for anyone who enjoys the Megalithic Portal's pages.
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Death and Memory at Wittenham Clumps by Andy B on Friday, 09 October 2015
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Howard M. R. Williams visits:
A while back I revisited Wittenham Clumps (Sinodun Hills) in the parish of Little Wittenham, Oxfordshire. It is managed as a nature reserve by the conservation charity the Earth Trust. I was interested in the fashions by which death and memory are intertwined within this archaeological and natural landscape.

The Clumps comprise of a pair of prominent hills. The clumps are Round Hill and Castle Hill while to the east is a third hill called Brightwell Barrow not normally regarded as one of the ‘Clumps’. Overlooking Didcot and Dorchester on Thames, and with views across much of south Oxfordshire framed by the Chilterns to the east and the Berkshire Downs to the south, this is a popular place for walkers (200,000 per year) who either park by the lane to the south of the hills or walk in from father afield or up from Little Wittenham or Dorchester on Thames.

More at
https://howardwilliamsblog.wordpress.com/2015/08/16/death-and-memory-at-wittenham-clumps/
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Re: Castle Hill by Anonymous on Monday, 11 October 2010
hello i visited Round hill but then we saw Castle hill.
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Castle Hill by coldrum on Monday, 30 August 2010
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Pastscape entry:

http://www.pastscape.org.uk/hob.aspx?hob_id=238126
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Street View by coldrum on Saturday, 27 March 2010
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