Wittenham Clumps

[3] Standing over 70 metres above their surroundings,[4] the Clumps have a prominent appearance and panoramic views, with the north slopes overlooking villages and towns whose sites mark some of the first settlements of the English.

[5] The view from The Clumps was described by the artist Paul Nash, who first saw them in 1911, as "a beautiful legendary country haunted by old gods long forgotten".

The panoramic views of the Berkshire and Oxfordshire countryside from the Clumps themselves are also spectacular; a viewpoint guide on the north side of Round Hill gives directions to many sights, the furthest being Faringdon Folly, a tower built on another Iron Age hillfort 27 kilometres (17 mi) to the west.

The white-walled reactor buildings of the Joint European Torus, site of the world's first successful controlled nuclear fusion experiments, can be seen around 6 km to the north-west.

The wooded area at the top of Castle Hill, which contains a public footpath, is now closed indefinitely due to the danger of falling trees.

The entrance to the wooded area atop Round Hill also carries a warning of falling branches due to fungal decay of many of its trees.

Excavation has revealed that the Iron Age inhabitants caught fish and wild boar as well as herding cattle and sheep.

[12] In 2004, Castle Hill was under excavation by Oxford Archaeology, and Time Team was charged with investigating the surrounding landscape to find any trace of activity that could be associated with the Clumps.

Moving down the southern slopes, however, many hidden features emerged, including enclosure ditches, pits, possible buildings, and other clusters of anomalies.

This revealed the remains of a Romano-British house with tesserae (mosaic) floors and painted wall plaster on the southern slope of Round Hill.

Further investigations found Iron Age rubbish pits distributed all over the valley, suggesting widespread settlement throughout the period.

Among the many artefacts found in the area are an oval bronze shield around 35 cm in diameter, retrieved from the nearby river Isis in 1836[13] and the 70 cm long Wittenham Sword and scabbard, found in 1982 and dating from the Late Iron Age (120 BC - AD 43)[14][15] In February 2021, archaeologists headed by Chris Casswell from DigVentures announced the discovery of at least 15 roundhouses dating from 400 to 100 BC.