More information : [SY 188881] Camp [NR] (1)
A rectangular promontory fortress 952 feet long and up to 380 feet wide stands on the cliff edge at Langham Field on Littlecombe Hill. It is defended on the north and east sides by a single rampart and ditch and on the west by two ramparts up to 19 feet in height above the bottom of their medial ditch. There are entrances through the west side, A, and at the northeast corner, C. Two breaks in the north side were possibly made some twenty years ago when bank 'B' was made to contain newly cultivatated land. A bank extends 350 feet west of the entrance at A and another bank extends eastward from the entrance at C. North of this entrance are outworks composed of two rectangular ramparts on the edge of a slope. East of these there is a bank and ditch over 200 feet in length between ravines. The bank is 5 feet 6 inches high and the ditch on its southwest side is 15 inches deep. (2-3)
A univallate hillfort, or defended enclosure of 3ha internal area, situated at SY 1886 8815 on a plateau at Berry Cliff, Branscombe. The site lies over a geological base of clay-with-flints, giving way rapidly to middle chalk. It is under permanent pasture but patches of gorse, bramble and thorn scrub obscure the defences in several places, notably along the W side where the ditch is choked. Dumping has taken place here in recent years, so much that the ditch on the NW side is all but infilled. Sporadic dumping is current along the N side.
Three sides of the defensive circuit are visible today. It is not clear whether the circuit was completed by a fourth, and is lost to coastal erosion, but the inward trends of the E and W defences, before reaching the cliff edge, might suggest that there was a southern side. Conversely, it could be argued that the high, steep, though not sheer coastal slope is defensive enough. The surviving area is sub-rectangular in plan and measures, at maximum 315m x 140m overall.
The defences consist of a main rampart with outer ditch, plus traces of a counterscarp or second, small rampart beyond. The counterscarp is seen best at 'A' on the N side; it is triangular in section, 4m wide at base, 1.1m high above the ditch bottom and 0.65m high externally. Along the remainder of the N side it is probably incorporated into the present hedge bank. Further traces exists at 'B' on the W side but only as a slight, ploughed-down, outward-facing slope, 1.5m long and 0.5m high. Hutchinson's plan suggests that it may have been a substantial feature in the locality (3-4).
The main rampart rises between 1.4 and 2m above the ditch bottom but is spread by ploughing internally so that it is never higher than 1m and generally between 0.35 and 0.7m. Hutchinson's measurement of 19 feet (5.79m) for the rampart to ditch bottom distance in the NW sector derives from taping the slope, not the true vertical (3-4). The rampart inner face has been cut back along the NW and part of the SW sides to form a hedge bank 'C'. The ditch generally is silted but averages 4.5mwide, and between 0.5 and 1.15m deep. On the E and W it is clearly a dug feature but on the N, where the ground falls gently away to the N, it is partially a product of the differential between main rampart and counterscarp.
Where exposed by erosion the rampart is visibly constructed of piled soil and flint derived from the ditch and possibly by shallow quarrying of surface material. Alongside the E defence on the inside is a gentle, hollowed area flanked by the inner tail of the main rampart (dashed line) and a slight, outward-facing slope 'D'.
The generally sinuous course of the defence has, in contrast, a marked change of alignment at 'E' on the W side. Although a likely position for an entrance and despite the intrusion of a hedgebank over the ditch and dumping into it, the uninterrupted line of the rampart is clear; there was never an entrance here.
There are several minor breaks or cuts 'F', into the defences and one major one, 'G'. None are contemporary with the fortification, the majority are caused by agricultural access to and from the interior, the remainder by footpath passage (contra sources 2 and 3).
A true entrance almost certainly exists at the NW corner at 'H' where the main rampart takes a pronounced southward inturn. Deeply cut by a modern vehicle access, the inturn is visible as a sausage-shaped bank 14m long, 6m wide and 0.6m high. Immediately to its W, separated by a gap of 2-3m is the remnant of the corresponding inturn, a slight, U-shaped platform 0.3m high, 'J'. Although incomplete and damaged by modern access through two gateways, there is enough to denote an inturned entrance from the main rampart c17m long, narrowing towards the interior.
The interior of the fort is almost perfectly flat. It has certainly been ploughed in the past, leading to erosion of the inner rampart faces. A U-shaped depression at 'K', marked by a slope 0.5m high, is possibly the site of a post medieval garden recorded by Hutchinson (4-5). Slight scarps,marked 'L', are the result of agricultural passage from adjacent breaks in the defences. One is earlier than the prominent earthwork 'M', a defunct hedge bank which was functional in 1840 (6). This feature, flanked by slight ditches, is attached to the inturn ('H').
"Outworks" described in source 2, to the W and E of the fort, are in fact disused hedge banks; their massive proportions must have been misleading. In the main they are not recorded on plan, apart from 'N',a ditched bank running approximately E-W on the E side. It is upon the crest of a substantial lynchet 'P', up to 4.5m long and 1m high. This clearly represents an earlier boundary and may be linked to 'Q', a flattened bank leading from an alleged barrow (SY 18 NE 12). Their antiquity is unclear.
Knowledge of a fortification here can be traced to the later 18th century when Dean Milles notes it in his "Parochial Collections" as "a small encampment on ye cliff of which there are some small remains, but ye mounds are very slight" (7). It was later described by P O Hutchinson who believed he had discovered it, calling it Bury Camp on the basis of the place name Berry Barton on which land it lies. Originally, Hutchinson considered it a camp of the Britons (5) but later changed his mind in favour of the Romans (3). In 1872 he excavated four holes in the bottom of the ditch, three along the NW defence and one in the SW. He encountered natural, yellow clay
3 feet (0.91m) beneath the surface and found several beach pebbles which were interpreted as slingstones (8).
There is little reason to doubt that Berry Cliff Camp is a fortification of prehistoric "hillfort" type. Forde-Johnstone thought it was not Iron Age (9). Recent opinion suggests that it is a defensible enclosure of a type encountered in the earlier 1st millenium BC rather than a developed hillfort (8). This is possible, though inturned entrances are usually associated with developed hillforts. Today, the defences are unimpresssive, but obviously severely damaged. In its original form, with a palisade or structured rampart and deeper ditch, it would have provided an effective enough obstacle. (4-11)
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