Wittenham Clumps

• Location: Little Wittenham, Didcot OX14 4QZ
• Opening times: 24 hours
• Entry: Free
• Access: Onsite car parking.

The Wittenham Clumps are a pair of chalk hills in South Oxfordshire, each of which are crowned by, for want of a better word, a clump of beech trees. Although not particularly tall – Round Hill is a mere 390ft (120m) above sea level and Castle Hill just 350ft (110m) – their distinctive arboreal chapeaus make them stand out in this otherwise flat stretch of the Thames Valley, and they are a much-loved local landmark.

I was introduced to the Wittenham Clumps via the paintings of Paul Nash (1889 – 1946), who specialised in landscape, surrealism and modernism, often on the same canvas. Nash served as an official war artist in both World Wars, and is best remembered for works from those conflicts such as We Are Making A New World (1918), The Menin Road (1919), Battle of Britain and Totes Meer (both 1941). But it was the Wittenham Clumps he returned to again and again.

He first saw them in 1911 while visiting some acquaintances near Wallington in Oxfordshire, and wrote to a friend that, “The country about and about is marvellous. Grey hollowed hills crowned by old, old trees, Pan-ish places down by the river, wonderful to think on, full of strange enchantment. A beautiful legendary country haunted by old gods long forgotten”. He came back the following year to make his first drawings and paintings of the hills, and returned throughout his life, capturing them on canvas well over twenty times.

As mentioned in a previous post, I was in the area to celebrate my sister-in-law Sue’s belated birthday, and ‘twas she who suggested I bag the Wittenham Clumps. As an added curio, she also pointed out that just a short walk away was the original Poohsticks bridge, where A. A. Milne first invented the game with his son Christopher Robin, or Winnie-the-Pooh first played the game in The House at Pooh Corner, whichever came first. Art and literature in one stop? Count me in.

There are no brown signs for the Whittenham Clumps themselves, but there are several for the Earth Trust, who own and manage the 500 acres of farmland, woodland and wetland in which the Clumps are located, so I follow these to arrive at a small carpark. The Trust’s mission is to promote access and engagement with natural green spaces, and going by the number of vehicles in the carpark today there is much accessing and engaging going on.

Castle Hill is directly ahead of me and Round Hill off to the left, and I head for this first. There are clearly marked tracks and it takes no more than five minutes to reach the top, but once on the grass trails things start getting a little muddy; apart from a smattering of days here and there, 2024 has been nothing but rain. A gated fence rings the trees within the interior of the wooded area. A warning notice informs me that many of the beech trees are showing signs of fungal decay and there is the risk of them falling or shedding limbs. In bigger letters it reads, “Please avoid accessing the woods in windy conditions”. Good advice I am sure, and it is certainly a bit blowy today, but I’m sporting my devil-may-care hat, so in I go. No trees fall and no limbs are shed, but the ground is now very muddy indeed. Little did I know this was mere foreshadowing of the mud bath I was soon to encounter.

Emerging at the other side I am rewarded with fine views across the Thames Valley. The Days Lock is clearly visible on the river (it is hard to believe this meandering trifle is the same river that built London), and Sue said that the Poohsticks bridge was just along from this, so I head off in that direction. I have a difficult enough time keeping my balance on the slope but at the bottom the green turns to brown and I enter one of Dante’s unimagined Circles of Hell. Every step is gingerly taken, but soon my right foot is sliding in an opposite direction from my left, and my arms shift up a few gears, going from helplessly outstretched to windmilling wildly. The only thing required to complete the picture is some cartoon sound effects. I am not at all feeling the “compelling magic” Nash claimed this place had, and if I’m being haunted by old gods I am too busy trying to remain upright to notice. My devil-may-care hat fell off some time ago and lies trampled in the mud.

To make matters worse, several locals pass by me, always at a distance as if sensing I will latch onto them limpet-like if they stray too close, and they are walking normally. They do not slip or slide or skid, nor do they occasionally grunt in a startled manner. They stroll with their dogs and chat about their plans for the weekend. I feel like one of those blue-white Glasgow guys that watches the locals saunter across some Mediterranean or Caribbean beach, but when they try to do the same they suddenly realise it is not sand beneath their feet, but razor-sharp rocks and jellyfish, and, dignity abandoned, they ooyah-ooyah all the way to the water.  

Eventually I grab hold of a fence – it might be Sussex-styled but right now I really don’t give a toss – and clamber along towards the gate, where, naturally, the ground is at it muddiest. Of course, the fence was not ergonomically designed with me in mind, so with hands on the top slat and feet on the bottom I am bent double like a half-opened Swiss Army knife. I am sweating like a pig, possibly emitting high-pitched whiney noises, and of course now is when a local engages me in chit-chat. She mainly points out the muddy areas – cheers! – and clarifies the location of the Poohsticks bridge, then opens the gate WITH ME HANGING ONTO IT, closes it, and carries on untroubled up the hill.

Anyway, I finally get to where the bridge should be, except there is an island in the middle of the river so there is two bridges, one flat one and one arched. I’m guessing the prettier arched bridge is the one, but Google it just in case. No signal. I take a picture of it and send it to Sue to confirm its identity, but, yep, no signal. So I take a picture of each to be on the safe side. It is only back at the hotel and have a signal that I discover that neither is the Poohsticks bridge! That is miles away, in Ashdown Forest in East Sussex. The arched bridge, called Little Wittenham Bridge, is instead where the World Poohsticks Championships were held from its inception in 1984 until 2015, and that’s a fairly interesting story in itself, but it means the bridge has no literary connection. And I have to make my way back across the mud and up the hill.

So here I am. Up the hill. Specifically Castle Hill. There has been more pain, but I don’t want to talk about it.

Castle Hill is so named because it is the site of an Iron Age hillfort, and the remains of its single ditch and rampart give the hill its distinctive contours. Although now commonly referred to as the Wittenham Clumps (which really only refers to their wooded crowns), these hills are properly called the Sinodun Hills, from the Celtic Seno-Dunum meaning ‘old fort’. The fort indelibly links the hill to a specific period in time, but humans have lived here across millennia. Archaeological excavations have uncovered the presence of Bronze Age, Neolithic, and even Mesolithic man, and the hills were later occupied by the Romans and the Saxons, no surprise considering its commanding view over the area. King Offa of Mercia was just following an old tradition when he built a watchtower here following his defeat of the West Saxons in 772CE. By comparison, the beech trees that made these hills famous are relative newcomers, being planted in the 1740s.  

And Castle Hill unexpectedly provides me with my literary fix. Over two weeks in the summer of 1844, or perhaps 1845, a local malt man called Joseph Tubb carved an ode celebrating the long history of the surrounding area into the bark of a beech tree. The tree, which inevitably became known as the Poem Tree, was already over 300 years old when Tubb incised his words, and it lasted for over half as much again. Unfortunately that fungal decay mentioned earlier got to it, and it collapsed in 2012. It is still lies where it fell, but how much of the poem is still visible I don’t know as I contented myself with the stone commemorating the tree. This was originally erected to celebrate the 150^th anniversary of the poem, but now stands as a memorial to both it and the tree.

Despite the mud, I thoroughly enjoyed my walk around Wittenham Clumps. Like Paul Nash, I expect I will come back. I regret not seeking out the Poem Tree now, and I wish I had been aware of Brightwell Barrow just under a kilometre away (sometimes my policy of not researching places in advance doesn’t pay off). This is a Bronze Age burial chamber that now has its own crown of trees, so looks like a mini-Clump, or a Wittenham Clumps tribute band. I would also like to take some distance shots with both hills in the frame. First and foremost, though, I would return here because I imagine the Clumps and the view from them would look rather spectacular on a hot summer evening or a snowy winter day, and pretty much all points in-between.

Destination or Diversion?

If your plan is to walk up to Castle Hill and then over to Round Hill, or vice-versa, and down again, then the Wittenham Clumps would count only as a diversion. However, I would recommend the walk down to Little Wittenham Bridge and along to Days Lock. When I come back – not if – I fancy finding a route along to Brightwell Barrow, and I would also like to check out Dorchester Abbey, just seven kilometres away. In other words, Wittenham Clumps could easily be converted into a destination.