More information : (SU 569924) Hill Fort (NR) Castle Hill(NAT) (1)
Sinodun Hill Camp consists of a single deep ditch with no true bank. Chalk from the ditch has been used to raise the level of the interior of the camp and a bank has been built outside the ditch on the lower side of the hill. The entrance is on the south-west (2). Roman coins have been found there in quantity (a,b).
Iron age pottery and two fragments of Samian were found in the camp and presented by Dr Watts to Reading Museum. (3)
A large sherd of decorated Saxon pottery found in the camp by P. Williams Hunt in 1937 is now in Reading Museum (4). (2-5)
Resurveyed at 1:2500 (see illustration card). (6)
Forde-Johnston describing the defences of Sinodun hill-fort
mentioned its possible association with the low-lying Dyke Hills site (SU 59 SE 3). Lambrick further implied that the construction of Dyke Hills in the late Iron Age may have coincided with the abandonment of the earlier Wittenham Clumps hillfort (ie: Sinodun Hill). (7,8)
SU 569 925. Sinodun (Wittenham Clumps). Listed in gazetteer as a univallate hillfort covering 4.0ha. (9)
In connection with the publication of an excavation by Bob Rutland on an area of IA settlement external to the hillfort, a field survey was conducted on the hillfort itself. Several sherds of probable late BA/early IA date (contemporary with Rutland's settlement) and one decorated sherd of a middle IA globular bowl were discovered in eroding areas on the outside of the rampart. (10)
Earthwork remains of a univallate hillfort at SU 5693 9244.
The site was surveyed from aerial photographs at 1:10,000 scale as part of the RCHME Thames Valley NMP. The hillfort enclosure is asymmetrical and curvilinear in form with one bank and ditch. However, the site is unusual in its construction having the bank outside the ditch (Morph No. TG.377.1.1). (11)
The Berks. Archaeological Journal for 1905 records the following information, noting that it was 'given by the parish clerk who, when as a child, heard the story from some of the old people'
"A singular tradition is preserved in the village that a treasure of some kind was buried ages ago at a spot called Money Pit in the trench on the eastern side of Castle Hill" [presumably the hillfort ditch] "A certain person .... proceeded to search for it. After digging he came to an iron chest upon which sat a bird like a raven; this uncanny apparition croaked out 'The man to own this chest is not born yet', whereupon the scared treasure seeker fled. No further attempt was known to have been made until the middle of the last century [ie. the 19th century] when a shepherd made a persistent search for several days, but in vain. The narrator moreover affirmed that the pit always sank [? subsided], although it had often been filled up with earth by himself and others , and that only nettles would grow there."
In the same source it is recorded that "human remains had frequently been discovered in the embankment near the entrance on the same [ie east] side of the camp". (13) |