More information : (Centred TQ 3315 1300) Ditchling Beacon Hillfort (LB). (1)
Ditchling Beacon, a pre-Roman contour camp. The summit is marked by a beacon hearth standing within the area of the camp at 813 ft.OD. A simple vallum rises c. 6 ft. above the ditch on the western side and both ditch and vallum follow the contour, except on the northside, where a natural steep slope makes artifical defences unnecessary. Mutilation in the NW corner is probably due to the contruction of two dew ponds. (2)
Excavations by Crow and Ross-Williamson in 1929 yielded very little beyond a few sherds of Roman and (?) La Tene III pottery, charcoal, flint flakes etc. Circular depressions within and towards the east end, thought to be habitation sites, proved negative. (3)
Extensive ploughing has partly destroyed and largely altered the bank and ditch earthworks, so that it is impossible to determine whether the gaps in them are original openings or later mutilations. The circular depressions referred to in the Excavation Report have also been obliterated. See 1/2500 survey. (4)
An IA hillfort of single rampart and ditch, utilizing steep natural slopes to the north. The greater part of the southern half has been reduced or destroyed by ploughing, and elsewhere the ramparts are weak, no more than 1.0m high. Modern tracks have mutilated the entrances. Survey revision (25") correct. (5)
Ditchling Beacon Hillfort can be seen in historic aerial photographs and lidar imagery an has been mapped as part of the Changing Chalk, Downs from Above Project. Aerial photographs taken in 1925 show the hillfort to be largely complete although the ramparts had been cut through in several places by tracks running east to west. During the Second World War the site was partly incorporated in a Defended Locality and was cut into by slit trenches and gun emplacements. This was cleared away after the war and the trenches filled in. At the same time the ramparts of the hillfort also appear to have been partly levelled. By 1950 part of the interior of the hillfort was under plough, although the rampart presumably survived to a degree and was still functioning as field boundary. By 1959 the ploughing had been extended north in the interior of the hillfort and by 1976 the ploughing had extended across the southern rampart leveling the earthwork. (7-8)
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