90
THE ESSEX NATURALIST.
I started work on the 13th May, 1935, with one workman
and worked for five weeks. When I started, fully half the
conjectured camp had been destroyed, but fortunately this
destruction, so far as the ditch was concerned, had affected not
more than most of the northern face and some of the southern
face, the eastern and western faces being practically intact. The
destruction, moreover, had one advantage in that I had six
sections (1 to 6 on the plan) of ditch exposed and the problem
was to see if those exposed sections were sections of a continuous
ditch.
I dug 16 trenches at frequent intervals, 14 of which (7 to 20
on the plan) cut through a ditch, and I think that there is no
reasonable doubt that a continuous ditch ran approximately
as shown on the plan, and that it enclosed an irregular area of
some 1 1/7th acre.
The course of the ditch on the eastern, southern and western
sides is fairly certain, but that of the northern side is more
doubtful as so much of it had been destroyed, and, on the reason-
able assumption that the 30 feet length of ditch at the N.E. corner,
the 25 feet length not far from the middle of the side and the
70 feet length at the N.W. are all part of one continuous ditch,
there is a break of direction from S.W. to N.W. somewhere about
the middle. Such a break of direction is somewhat unusual,
unless it is required by the lie of the ground, which is not the case
here, but it certainly would appear to have occurred in this
place. The angle at the N.E. corner is also more acute than
usual. The following table gives some details of the sides:—
The soil of the field consists of gravel and sand mixed with
a varying amount of loam, and it was difficult always to be
certain that in excavating the ditch we did not get out more
than the infilling, but the following section of ditch is, I think,
fairly accurate and typical, although the dimensions varied
somewhat from point to point, thus the width at the bottom of