Camp Green (Danes Camp), Hathersage

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Danes Camp Hathersage

Camp Green (often called “Danes Camp”) crowns a Limestone-capped knoll immediately north-east of St Michael’s Church in Hathersage (OS grid SK 234 819). Perched above the Hope Valley, it commands wide views down the River Derwent corridor and sits at the transition between the Millstone Grit plateaux to the north and the lower limestone and sandstone vale to the south (gatehouse-gazetteer.info).

Structure & Materials

Danes Camp Hathersage

Originally a complete oval enclosure of roughly 50 × 40 m internally, Camp Green’s defences consist of a turf-faced earthen bank up to 3 m high, backed by a broad external ditch almost 8 m across at its widest surviving points. The southern half of the circuit has been largely obliterated by modern buildings and landscaping, but the northern rampart and ditch remain sharply defined, cut into the natural Magnesian Limestone nodules and Glacial Drift that cap the hill (heritagegateway.org.uk).

Dating & Excavation History

Danes Camp Hathersage

In 1976–77 R.A. Hodges of Sheffield University conducted small trial-trenches across the bank and ditch. No structural timbers or in-situ occupation layers were found; the only datable artifact was a solitary 13th-century Brackenfield-ware pottery sherd from the back-dirt of the ditch. By analogy with better-studied sites, however, Hodges concluded that Camp Green is a Norman ring-work castle—essentially a motte-less earth-and-timber fortress—constructed in the late 11th or early 12th century to control the Hope Valley approaches and the trans-Pennine Packhorse routes (gatehouse-gazetteer.info).

Archaeological Interpretation

Camp Green belongs to the “Class A” ring-work typology in King & Alcock’s 1969 survey of English and Welsh minor castles. Its siting on a natural knoll provided a defensible platform without the need for a raised motte, while the wide ditch—described as “moat-like” in early surveys—would have been revetted in timber and water-logged in places to impede attackers. The scarcity of medieval domestic debris suggests it served primarily as a watch post or local lord’s stronghold, rather than a permanent garrison (gatehouse-gazetteer.info).

Landscape & Legacy

Over centuries, Camp Green’s defences fell into disuse. Medieval and post-medieval buildings now occupy much of its southern circuit, and the ditch has silted up in places. Today, the surviving bank and northern ditch segment are scheduled by Historic England and form part of the village’s heritage trail, interpreted alongside the church and the nearby early Saxon cross Shaft. Camp Green thus provides a tangible link between Hathersage’s Norman past and its later industrial innovations—such as Christopher Schutz’s 16th-century wire-drawing works—reminding us how this valley has long been a crossroads of defence, faith and industry (en.wikipedia.org).