ANCIENT EARTHWORKS an irregular excavation on the summit. The other entrenchments are narrow of base, 2 i ft. at the widest for the rampart and ditch together ; all now so poorly defined that it is hardly possible to recognize them as defensive earthworks. The whole is covered with underwood. Where the original entrances were is uncertain ; the mount however has a slight causeway, ancient or modern, on the west side. LuDDESDowN : Henley's Wood. — Here is a slight banking of polygonal outline, with a corresponding shallow rounded fosse on the outside, enclosing a considerable space which has been regarded as a 'camp.' It is, however, one of those doubtful enclosures which may have been occupied as a British village settlement, or may be a piece of land imparked in feudal days. The present wood within which it is included extends beyond the lines of the earthwork ; the brushwood being very thick, examination can be conducted only with difficulty. The earthwork was locally known as the ' Cam,' a word which indicated an ancient earthen mound or camp.' Maidstone : Mangravel Wood. — This enclosure is without natural defence, standing upon ground which is practically level 300 ft. above the sea and 250 ft. above the river Medway, which flows two miles away on the north-west side. The entrenchments are exceedingly slight, the base of the rampart and ditch together being only 24 ft. wide, and though in their perfect condition they would have been rather better defined they could have formed no true defence. The shape of the enclosure is entirely artificial. What entrenchments exist are well preserved, and are within and upon the edge of a wood. The Ordnance Survey (18 19) shows neither a wood nor this earthwork, but the later maps entitle it a 'British camp.' The site of original entrance is doubtful, but the north and south openings appear older than the others. An earthwork called the Coniger five miles west of Amesbury in Wiltshire is of the same shape and encloses tumuli. The origin of such low-banked slightly-ditched enclosures is in most cases extremely doubtful.' UNCLASSIFIED EARTHWORKS [Class X] Appledore. — From the Saxon chronicle we learn that in a.d. 893 a part of the Danish army made a work at 'Apuldre,' but we have sought in vain for traces of a camp at Appledore. North of the tract of land, immediately south-west, still known as the Isle of Oxney, flowed the river which drained the hinterland covered by the great forest of 'Andred'; where the water flowed are meadow lands, and it may be that the deposit of silt of which this now dry land is composed has buried the camp we seek, for doubtless it was placed ' Halliwell, Diet, of Archaic Words, etc. 2 See notes on Shingleton in Eastry parish and Preston in Aylesford. 439
