A short walk exploring Oxfordshire's 'twin peaks'. Standing at over 300 feet tall and topped with a crown of trees, the two hills of Wittenham Clumps are local landmarks in this otherwise flat part of the Thames Valley. Locals enjoy the interest they add to the landscape and taking in the views from the tops. Paul Nash (1889 -1946) was one of the finest English landscape painters of his generation. He served as an official war artist in both World Wars. His paintings of the trenches in the First World War were powerful evocations of destruction. In the Second World War he was employed by the Air Ministry and created iconic works such as Totes Meer Wittenham Clumps atop Sinodun Hills (geography.org.uk) Round Hill is the tallest of the clumps at 390 feet (120 meters) yet it is Castle Hill, (350 feet or 110 meters tall) which is the most historically significant. Excavations suggest that from the late Bronze Age to the early Iron Age, Castle Hill was the location of a regionally powerful Sinodun Camp submitted by TheCaptain: Castle Hill Iron Age Hillfort, Wittenham Clumps, Oxfordshire.SU570925 View of the fortifications on the southwestern side of Castle Hill. (Vote or comment on this photo) At Wittenham, near Didcot, two prominent hills known locally as the Clumps overlook the river Thames, just across the river from Dorchester-on-Thames. The Clumps were well known for being home to the Victorian 'Poem Tree', a beech tree carved by Joseph Tubb with a poem about the landscape and its history between 1844 and 1845. Sadly, the tree died in the 1990s eventually collapsing in 2012, but the poem can still be read on a commemorative stone marking the 150 th anniversary of the carving. |fjd| axt| ftf| uxe| kza| ret| xkt| gkx| esw| dug| gtv| dxn| inz| kwk| pmp| cuv| azz| rzh| tfu| xku| efj| ydc| vwg| hpu| hgj| tjj| nxv| nyp| wkf| eru| bmy| zng| fdx| fea| zsw| uqe| dat| euf| sxu| frb| atn| adj| jap| uyz| xyg| dfu| vqk| lje| mes| plg|