Castle Hill, Alton

NS53NW 6 5025 3879

(NS 5025 3879) Castle Hill (NAT)

Motte (NR)

OS 6" map (1968)

Castle Hill is an undoubted mote with a D-shaped summit (40ft x 25ft) showing faint traces of a rampart except on the N side. At the foot of the mound on the E there is part of an enclosure bounded by a much wasted rampart, this is cut off by the road, but a slight elevation which may mark its continuance can be traced on the S side of the road as far as the ruins of a cottage.

V G Childe and A Graham 1943.

This motte is generally as described except that there are no certain indications of the continuance of the small enclosure on the S side of the road.

Visited by OS (JLD), 14 August 1956

Surveyed at 1:2500.

Visited by OS (WDJ), 6 February 1962

Castle Hill is not convincing as a motte, and although utilized in the past, this usage could be of a relatively late date. The turfed lip (0.1m high internally) around the S part of the summit may indicate the outline of a roughly rectangular building or structure, while the supposed rampart below and to the SE appears to be no more than the stone edge-scarp of a levelled building platform as stated; there is no trace of this feature continuing to the S, and it certainly does not exist around the equally vulnerable W side.

The knoll is easily approached from the S, where it is less than 3 m high, and there is no evidence that the road overlies an outer defence.

Revised at 1:2500.

Visited by OS (JRL), 16 July 1982.