Winkelbury camp

Winkelbury Camp is an Iron Age hillfort on the northern spur of Winkelbury Hill, south-east of Berwick St John in Wiltshire. A single rampart bank, up to 2.5 metres high, enclaves about 7.5 hectares within an oval roughly 382 by 160 metres. An outer ditch, up to 2 metres deep and 4 metres wide, runs around the bank. Inside the fort are hollows once interpreted as the remains of huts and storage pits. Augustus Pitt Rivers excavated part of the site from 1881 to 1882 and found a timber hut with wattle-and-daub walls, flint tools and Romano-British pottery. He showed the fort had at least two occupation periods, probably early and late Iron Age. Later field work by R Feachem in 1971 suggested three incomplete building phases, with irregular construction perhaps done by separate gangs. The banks and ditches appear to have been built in separate lengths over time. The earliest part was two unaligned banks in the south with a central gap. Later, banks were added on the west and east. Finally, a curved bank across the interior created a smaller oval area of about 3 hectares at the north end. The changing layout hints the camp served purposes beyond defence, shaped by circumstances around the site.