156 NOTES ON ANCIENT DEFENSIVE EARTHWORKS.
Though Chalk camps south of the Thames have no urgent
need of artificial mounds, their positions being so strong natur-
ally that they would derive but little advantage from structures
necessary in the Eastern Counties, yet I have seen an ancient
British camp on the Chalk of Kent, the plan of which allies it
not to the ordinary entrenchments on the Chalk of the southern
counties, but to the strongholds of Rayleigh, Pleshey and Stan-
stead Mountfitchet. It is that, already mentioned, which stands
on the Chalk escarpment north of Folkestone and is popularly
known as "Caesar's Camp."
This occupies a very strong natural position on a portion of
the Chalk escarpment which is almost isolated from the main
mass, but it differs in plan from every other Chalk entrenchment
Plan of the Pleshey Earthworks. From the Ordnance
Map. (Six inches=one mile).
I have seen. Instead of being surrounded, as usual, by a simple
rampart and ditch, there is, as at Rayleigh, Pleshey, Stanstead
Mountfitchet and other places, a smaller enclosure, resembling
the Keep-mound of those places, surrounded by a rampart and
ditch, and connected by means of a narrow neck of ground with
a much larger horse-shoe shaped entrenchment, also surrounded
with a rampart and ditch. The name Caesar's Camp has evi-
dently been given to it in consequence of the finding of Roman
tiles and pottery within its entrenchments ; 6 but, as I have already
stated, its position and shape are those of a British not of a
Roman Camp, though the Romans doubtless made occasional
use of it, as it is about midway between their stations at Dover
6 Murray's Handbook for Kent, p. 43.