St Catherine's Hill, Hampshire

Iron Age The top of St. Catherine's Hill is ringed by the ramparts of an Iron Age hillfort, The fortifications consist of a single rampart (univallate dump or glacis) with an outer ditch, begun in the Early Iron Age; much of the way around there is also a counterscarp bank. At the north-east side is an original entrance, with the rampart turned inwards. There is no evidence of an initial wooden rampart, unlike some other hillforts in Wessex. In the Middle Iron Age, 400–300 BC, the fortifications were made higher and the entrance was reshaped. File:St. Catherine's Hill, Winchester 08 (cropped).jpg|Iron Age rampart and outer ditch, with the dry valley in the background Medieval to Early modern At the top of the hill, a copse of beech trees contains the site of the 12th-century chapel of St. Catherine. There is a mizmaze near the hilltop copse, probably cut between 1647 and 1710 in the Early modern period. It was remade between 1830 and 1840. File:Plague Pits Valley, south of St Catherine's Hill - geograph.org.uk - 1103810.jpg|Plague Pits Valley. Burial pits were dug during the Black Death when the city's graveyards became full. The game of Winchester College football was formerly played on top of the hill; boys who were not playing stood beside the pitch to keep the ball from rolling down the hill. In 1922, The Old Wykehamist Lodge of Freemasons bought the hill and gave it to the college. The hill remains in the college's ownership, but is open to the public. When the Didcot, Newbury and Southampton Railway was built in the 1890s, it separated the hill from the water meadows in the Itchen valley. The 1930s construction of the Winchester By-pass increased the severance. The hill has been rejoined to the city and college by the removal of the road, but it has been severed from the chalk hills on its east by the M3 motorway. That road, built in the 1990s, aroused the Twyford Down protests. File:St Catherine's Hill and Winchester College - geograph.org.uk - 2685606.jpg|St Catherine's Hill seen above Winchester College Chapel File:Winchester Football in 1838 by Richard Baigent.jpg|Engraving of St. Catherine's Hill as a bare hill in 1838, with a Winchester College football match, by then played in the Itchen valley rather than on the hilltop == Natural history ==

Geology St. Catherine's Hill is geologically within the upfolding of the chalk called the Winchester anticline. The anticline has eroded to expose older rocks to the north of the hill, with a surviving inward-facing circular escarpment encompassing St. Catherine's and other hills to the south, Oliver's Battery to the west, Magdalen Hill to the north, and Telegraph Hill and Chilcomb Down to the east. St. Catherine's Hill belongs to the roughly 90 million years old Upper Cretaceous 'New Pit Chalk Formation' within the Turonian stage. The hill is bounded to the south by Plague Pits Valley, a dry valley in the chalk of Twyford Down. To the west, the line of chalk hills has been transected by the River Itchen. File:Southern aspect of St Catherine's Hill, Winchester - geograph.org.uk - 25665.jpg|From the south Ecology The soil on the hill is a thin dark rendzina, directly on top of the chalk; it is thinnest high on the slopes, thickening into the valleys. This provides a varied set of local environments supporting a range of communities of flowering plants, including small populations of numerous downland species of orchids. Species uncommon for southern England include bastard toadflax and juniper. The hill has accordingly been designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest. Much of the site is chalk grassland, supporting the uncommon chalkhill blue butterfly. Where grazing has kept the grass short, the grassland is dominated by sheep's fescue grass, accompanied by lime-loving (calcicolous) plants such as common rock-rose, salad burnet, thyme, horseshoe vetch, kidney vetch, fairy flax, clustered bellflower, and orchids such as autumn lady's tresses and frog orchid. File:Sheep on St Catherine's Hill - geograph.org.uk - 450583.jpg|Sheep controlling scrub invasion, with the hilltop beechwood in the background File:Primroses on St Catherine's Hill.jpg|Primulas on the hilltop == References ==