The monument includes the visible and buried remains of a small Iron Age multivallate hillfort located at the southern end of Pitchbury Woods (some 3km to the north west of Colchester) overlooking West Bergholt and the shallow valley of St Botolph’s Brook from the north. The hillfort is oval in plan, measuring some 300m from north to south, 190m east to west and containing an internal area of approximately 1.9ha. The perimeter of the hillfort is defined by the line of a large bank and outer ditch. An additional smaller bank and external ditch encircle the defences around all but the south western side where the ground falls away more sharply than elsewhere. The circuit of the ramparts is depicted as a wide hedgerow on the Tithe Map of 1840; however the greater part had been levelled for arable land. The northern arc of the ramparts, which includes the single entrance causeway to the north east, lies within the southern corner of Pitchbury Woods and was unaffected by these changes. The inner bank here still measures up to 1.2m in height and 10m across and the outer bank approximately 1m by 7m. The inner and outer ditches (both largely silted) measure 1m by 7m and 0.5m by 5m respectively. In 1933 trenches were dug across the northern ramparts, the causeway, the buried eastern and western ramparts and the ploughed interior. These excavations recovered the plan of the perimeter and demonstrated the survival of both the buried ditches and traces of the levelled ramparts. Sections cut through the upstanding ramparts revealed a ‘dump’ construction using gravel from the ditches with no evidence of revetment or internal structure. Waterlogged or marshy deposits were encountered along the base of the innermost ditch which was shown to be over 4m deep and to penetrate the underlying London clay. The entrance causeway was clad with a gravel surface which showed little sign of use. The hillfort’s interior similarly revealed few traces of occupation – principally two empty storage pits and two hearths. Further excavation took place in 1973 when a 10m wide strip was investigated prior to the construction of a pipeline skirting the southern edge of the wood. This work confirmed the nature of the rampart’s construction and provided more details of the denuded ramparts and infuilled sections of the ditches. Worked flints and a few fragments of earlier prehistoric pottery were found across the hillfort’s interior and beneath the base of the rampart, indicating human presence on the valley edge in the Mesolithic period (around 5000- 3400 BC) and probably some settled occupation in the late Neolithic period (around 2400-1800 BC). As during the earlier excavation, physical evidence for the date of the hillfort’s construction and use proved to be scarce. Pottery fragments found beneath the remnants of the ramparts and within a few pits, together with charcoal deposits dated by radiocarbon analysis, point to some occupation during the early Iron Age (eighth to fourth centuries BC); however this does not appear to correspond with the development of the hillfort. In view of the defences, it is considered more probably that the hillfort was constructed in the late Iron Age (around 50 BC to AD 10), and this interpretation is supported by a few shards of late Iron Age pottery recovered from both excavations. The overall lack of artefactual evidence is thought to indicate minimal or sporadic occupation, with the hillfort perhaps serving as a place of occasional refuge or as a seasonal gathering place. By the early first century AD the hillfort was almost certainly redundant, superseded by the extensive settlement and growing linear defences of Camulodunum – the Iron Age precursor to the Roman town at Colchester. All fences and fence posts are excluded from the scheduling, although the ground beneath these features is included. <1>