Brandon Camp Hillfort

Iron Age Hillfort

Brandon Camp is a large univallate Iron-Age hillfort lies about a mile (1.6km) south of Leintwardine village on Brandon Hill, where two ramparts set to the east and south enclose a triangular area of c.8¼ acres (3.3ha) at the north-western end of the hill, where the natural steep scarp offorded adequate protection from this quarter. The roman defences consisted of an 800 ft stretch of rampart on the east, with a 700 ft bank on the south, and utilising the defences of the hillfort which curved round on the north and west. There is a gateway set in the approximate center of the southern defences and another on the eastern side off-set noticeably towards the south; it is possible that there was one more entrance gap at the north extremity of the eastern rampart.

The fact that there were visible crop-marks within the confines of the enclosure was first recognised on aerial photographs by J.K. St. Joseph taken in 1959, and other photographs taken in 1965 have revealed various crop marks within the defended area. There are two circular crop-marks, the larger c.25m in diameter lying some 200ft south-west of a smaller c.15m circle which was seemingly open to the south, both lying towards the north-western edge of the fort. Two polygonal crop-marks were also identified, one on the north-western edge of the enclosure to the west of the larger circular mark, the other in the extreme south-west corner of the hillfort, possibly underlying the southern rampart.

The feature observed on these A.P.’s which caused the greatest interest, however, was a rectangular area c.14.5m north-south x 32m east-west, which was seen be formed from a series of twenty-one parallel lines arranged east-west and spaced about 1.2 metres apart; the signature of a large timber-built Roman military granary, lying just inside the gateway of the eastern defences and parallel with them.

Air photographs taken in 1965 and 1976 also revealed the distinct likelyhood that the original Iron-Age defences enclosed much of the summit of Brandon Hill, an area of some 100 acres (c.40ha). Archaeologists were thus presented with the intriguing possibility that the visible defences of Brandon Camp were entirely Roman in origin, and that what we have here is a situation somewhat like that at Hod Hill in Dorset, where a Roman fort was sited in the corner of a captured British hillfort.

Map References for Brandon Camp

OS National Grid Reference: SO401724
Dimensions: irregular
Area: c.8¼ acres (c.3.3 ha)

References for Brandon Camp

  • Aerial Reconnaissance : Recent Results, 47 by J.K. St. Joseph in Antiquity LIII.207 (March 1979) pp.51-55, Plate.VIIIa/b;
  • Hereford and Worcester County Sites & Monuments Record Cat. No. #07526;
  • Air Reconnaissance in Roman Britain 1977-1984 by G.S. Maxwell & D.R. Wilson in Britannia xviii (1987, p.11); 

Map References for Brandon Camp

NGRef: SO401724 OSMap: LR137/148

Roman Roads near Brandon Camp

None identified

Sites near Brandon Camp Hillfort