OS1/21/18/72

Continued entries/extra info

Bodsberry Hill continued :-

this quarter of the Camp is defended by a second rampart and ditch. There are here gates through both intrenchments, and from them a Roman road can clearly and unequivocally be traced descending the hill. In the interior of the Camp a draw well has been sunk, which, from its position on the top of a hill of considerable elevation, is evidence of no small engineering skill. There are also two Mounds, but I am not prepared to say they are artificial. As a military post this is one of great strength and importance. It commands a most extensive view, not only of the course of the Clyde, but of the road into Annandale, and from the nature of the ground must have been almost impregnable before the invention of gunpowder. The camp is certainly not a rectangle, of an irregular form, and from this it may be urged that it is not a Roman fortification but I think this is clearly rebutted by the fact that an undoubted Roman road leads directly into it, and we must not forget that it occupies the whole of the plateau, and that the attempt to inscribe a rectangle within the , would have destroyed the security of the Camp, because, had this been done, the extreme suddenness and steepness of the descent would have enabled a light armed enemy to have established himself in a perfect and secure cover within a few feet of the base of the rampart.". In alluding to the Well in the camp on Bodsberry Hill in the Cissbury papers Mr. Irving reports as follows. "I therefore determined to have it opened, and have now to direct your attention to the most interesting results (see Trace attached.) The depression visible on the surface was twenty seven feet in diameter, five feet deep in the centre, and situated at the lowest point of the plateau occupied by the Camp, by cutting into it we soon came to signs of the presence of water, and on reaching the depth of two and a half feet we