Sticker Camp later Prehistoric-Roman round

Reasons for Designation

Rounds are small embanked enclosures with an external ditch, usually circular or oval, forming one of a range of known settlement types dating to the later Iron Age and Roman periods. They usually have a single earth and rubble bank and outer ditch, broken by one entrance gap. Excavated examples have produced dry-stone supporting walls within the bank, paved or cobbled entrance-ways and post-built gate structures. Excavated features within rounds have included foundations for timber, turf or stone-built houses, of oval or rectangular plan, often set around the inner edge of the enclosing bank. Other features include hearths, drains, gullies, pits, and rubbish middens. Evidence for industrial activities has been recovered from some sites, including small-scale metal-working, and among the domestic debris occur items traded from distant sources. Some rounds are associated with secondary enclosures, often circular or rectangular, and either butted against the round as an annexe or forming an additional enclosure up to 100m away. Rounds are viewed primarily as agricultural settlements, the equivalents of farming hamlets, replaced by unenclosed settlement types by the 7th century A.D.. Over 750 rounds are recorded nationally, occurring throughout the areas bordering the Irish Sea, and confined in England to Cornwall and SW Devon. They are most densely concentrated in west Cornwall and are usually sited on hill-slopes and spurs. They are particularly important as one of the major sources of information on settlement and social organisation in the Iron Age and Roman periods in south-west England. Consequently sites displaying an extensively complete plan representative of the range of known types, topographical locations and geographical spread will normally be considered as nationally important.

Sticker Camp is of particular importance in preserving an unusual double defensive system layout, complete with a clear approach-way, in an area well away from the main concentration of rounds but forming one part of a hierarchy of broadly contemporary sites known in the near vicinity.

Details

The monument includes a later Prehistoric to Roman period round, comprising an oval enclosure defined by a rampart and outer ditch, with a more distant secondary rampart and ditch. Both defensive lines are broken by broad hollow-way running to the enclosure from the west. The inner rampart at Sticker Camp survives 10m wide, 0.75m high max., enclosing an oval featureless interior 70m N-S by 42m E-W (0.25ha); the rampart is reduced at the centre of the W side, considered to mark the site of an entrance. The outer ditch, 16-19m wide and 0.3m deep max., bulges outwards at the centre of the W side, corresponding to the line of approach from the W of an E-W hollow 15-20m wide, 0.5m deep max., and visible from 30m to c.90m from the inner rampart crest on its W side; this hollow marks the entrance- route into the round. An outer rampart and ditch is also visible, though poorly preserved, following a sub-circular course slightly eccentric to the inner defences, centred a little SW of the inner enclosure's centre. The outer rampart is best preserved around the NE and SE sectors, surviving to a maximum 14m wide and 0.5m high, the distance between the inner and outer rampart crests ranging from c.35m to the NE to c.50m to the SE. The outermost ditch survives to a maximum 5m wide and 0.3m deep in its NW sector, and runs into the N side of the hollow-way 65m W of the inner rampart crest. A low irregular mound, 16m long by 0.25m high and centred c.55m SW of the inner rampart's SW curve, may be a remnant of the outer rampart in this sector.

This monument has been the subject of several descriptions by later 19th and early 20th century archaeologists who recorded the layout of the monument's earthworks and their state of preservation. The monument is sited around the almost flat summit of a low hill in the dissected terrain between the granite of the Hensbarrow Downs 3km to the N and the south Cornwall coast 5km to the SE. It stands in the former Treloweth Common, but its site had been enclosed by 1813.

All modern hedges and gates, the modern stock shed, and the overhead electricity supply line and its poles are excluded from the scheduling, but the land beneath, including hedge-banks, is included.

MAP EXTRACT The site of the monument is shown on the attached map extract.

Legacy

The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System number:

15012

Legacy System:

RSM

Sources

Books and journals
Page, W, The Victoria History of the County of Cornwall: Volume I, (1906), 470

Other
Title: 1": 1 mile Ordnance Survey Map Source Date: 1813 Author: Publisher: Surveyor:
Beagrie, N, Iron Age Multivallate Settlements of the St Austell Area, 1980, Unpubl. B.A. Disstn., Univ. Durham
Cornwall SMR entry for PRN 20660, round on Treloweth Common,
McLaughlin, J, Untitled MS, filed as RRIC, 31, P1 XI, (1847)
Thomas, R, Untitled survey sheets (deposited in RIC, Truro), (1840)
AM 107 record relating to CO 961, Camp 600m E of Sticker,
Mercer, R J, Original AM7 for CO 961, camp 600m E of Sticker, (1973)
No. 44; 23/1/1852, Thomas, R, Untitled letter to The West Briton Newspaper, (1852)

End of official list entry

All text content is available under the Open Government Licence v3.0 , except where otherwise stated. Any supplied maps are © Crown Copyright [and database rights] 2026 OS AC0000815036 and may not be reproduced without permission.