Archaeology & past land use on the Wittenham Clumps
Archaeology on the Wittenham Clumps
Little Wittenham Nature Reserve lies on two small hills overlooking the fertile Thames valley. The site would have been of great strategic importance to the local inhabitants.
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Iron Age hill fort
Many archaeological finds have been found on the Northmoor Trust Estate. The earliest flint tools belonged to Neolithic hunter-gathers (up to 4,500 BC) indicating that people visited the reserve before the ‘invention’ of farming. However, most finds date from the late Bronze Age through Iron Age to the end of the Roman period.
The Iron Age hill fort is a Scheduled Ancient Monument (SAM). The ramparts and ditch you see today was dug around 600 BC (some 2,600 years ago!). Originally, they would have been much deeper and steeper. They have partially filled in over time. Excavations by Oxford Archaeology during 2003 and 2004 revealed an earlier Bronze Age hill fort buried inside the Iron Age one. The Iron Age people had simply made the old fort bigger! On Round Hill a large Iron Age settlement was discovered. Again there was evidence of earlier Bronze Age activity and also later Roman trackways and buildings.
Download Oxford Archaeology Report on the Excavation of Castle Hill >>
Together with the Dyke Hills on the other side of the Thames, this is a nationally important Iron Age settlement complex.
Grassland Areas
As far back as the 11th Century, when the site was sold to Abingdon Abbey, records indicate that much of the reserve was under cultivation and producing a variety of crops.
Following dissolution of the monastery in the 16th Century the site came under the ownership of the Dunch family. Cultivation has continued on and off right through to the 20th Century when both hills were ploughed and cultivated during the two World Wars. Subsequently, they were re-seeded as permanent pasture, although Castle Hill was back under arable cultivation when the Northmoor Trust bought the site in 1984.
Steeply sloping ground beside the river Thames and on the hill fort ramparts escaped the plough. It is in these areas that much of the reserve's grassland plants and insects have survived. Elsewhere, the repeated ploughing and applications of fertilisers and/or herbicides had considerably reduced the wildlife value of these areas. However under sympathetic management implemented by the Northmoor Trust many of these species are beginning to recolonise.
Little Wittenham Wood
The origins of the woodland probably lie in the late medieval period, and much of the woodland overlies medieval ridge-and-furrow cultivation. Early in the 18th century ornamental parkland had become established over much of the Nature Reserve. This is clearly indicated on the Rocque's Topographic Map of Berkshire (1761). The two woodland ponds, home to the reserve's great crested newts, were probably constructed at this point.
By 1843 records indicate that Little Wittenham Wood was well established and worked as commercial Ash and Sycamore coppice with Oak standards. A variety of woodland products, such as fire-wood and hurdles, were produced. Coppicing had been abandoned by the 1920's in favour of pheasant rearing, shooting and fishing. At this point the wood was keepered and 'pest species' controlled. During the 1950's to 1970's large tracts were cleared and replanted with conifer and hardwood plantation. The two woodland ponds were re-excavated in 1971 to encourage wildfowl for shooting. This unintentionally led to the establishment of one of Europe's most important Great Crested Newt populations as reflected by the reserve's recent SSSI and cSAC designations.
The Wittenham Clumps
The Wittenham Clumps, the twin hilltop Beech plantations dating from around 1740, are one of the most visible and well-known landscape features of South Oxfordshire. They were planted by the Dunch family and are the oldest known ornamental Beech plantings in Britain. The Beech trees are nearing the ends of their natural lives and new trees have been planted to replace them.
Learn more about the archaeology of the Wittenham Clumps at Project Timescape >>
