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Summary

'North Siege Battery' reportedly erected by Parliamentarians in 1644 to attack Donnington Castle and surviving as an earthwork in the late 19th century

Other Statuses and Cross-References

• National Monuments Record No.: EHNMR-1328899 English Heritage NMR Excavation Index for England
  SU 46 70

Monument Type(s):

• SIEGEWORK? (17th century - 1644 AD? to 1647 AD?)

Full Description

Money uses documentary evidence and field visits to locate a Civil War siege battery on Snelsmore Common or Heath: an earthwork (named North Siege Battery) is shown on his plan of the second Battle of Newbury <1> along with another entrenchment of similar size and plan to the east. They were apparently still visible in the late 19th century: "Here the trenches constructed by the Parliamentarians are still very distinctly traceable… the remains of field-works have been discovered and identified, from their agreement with contemporary descriptions, as the site of siege-batteries."

The GIS line is an approximation of these ditches from his plan - no current site visit has confirmed the 21st century survival of this feature, and nothing is visible in a 2003 air photograph <3>. The land that the reported ditches cross was largely developed as a golf course in the later 20th century. It is also possible that Money misinterpreted an older earthwork (may be a deer park boundary?) as a Civil War trench, although his plan also marks Black Ditch, further north on Snelsmore Common as "Old Entrenchment" <1>.

The NMR website has a record for an earthwork east of Hills Pightle, found during Wessex Archaeology's evaluation work in advance of the Newbury Bypass; it was then concluded that feature was a land boundary, possibly connected to activities at Donnington Castle or English Civil War Defences <4>. - Wessex Archaeology [assessment and evaluation reports] 1996/ Wessex Archaeology and the A43 Newbury Bypass Vol 2; 1994-1996 (Earthwork to the East of Hill's Pightle March 1996). However, this bank and ditch runs from north to south.

Sources and further reading

Related Monuments

Associated Excavations and Fieldwork

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