An Adulterine Castle on Faringdon Clump, Berkshire
From the market-place at Faringdon the Oxford road mounts steadily, passing under the north slope of the hill known variously as Faringdon Clump or Faringdon Folly. The hill is a rounded knoll, the summit of which stands 505 ft. O.D. and, besides being a well-known landmark in the Vale of White Horse, commands an extensive prospect in every direction. Like Cumnor Hurst, Shotover, Brill and others, it is one of a series of undenuded caps of Cretaceous sands overlying Berkshire oolites that crop out at intervals between Faringdon and Aylesbury. The sands are ferruginous, dark yellow with lighter sands below, divided by a layer of sandstone rock. On the summit of the hill is a clump of beeches and Scotch firs, probably planted here, as on so many similar eminences, in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century.