The Gatehouse website record for Abingdon, Serpenhills

In the civil parish of Abingdon. In the historic county of Berkshire (Modern Authority of Oxfordshire, 1974 county of Oxfordshire).

Traces of a bank and ditch c. 390' long extend along a footpath leading to Radley, on the N. side of a large field opposite the turn to Northcourt, on the upper Oxford Road, near Abingdon. Much slighter traces of a bank extend for the same distance on the east side, but nothing was visible on the other two sides. The site is comparable with the unfinished Park Wood intrenchments at Hampstead Norris [SU 57 NW 14] and it fits the position, described by Leland, of an earthwork called `Serpenhill'. All traces of this earthwork have been destroyed by a housing estate. (PastScape–ref. Huntingford)
Serpenhil is clearly a corruption of Serpent hill–showing the linear nature of the work in Leland's time.
Leland reports this as the site of C9 battle between the Saxons and the Danes and called it the remains of camp trenches. However, Huntingford recorded this as one a several linear earthworks crossing the line of pre-historic and Saxon routeways, and this is a more probably function. Its recorded form, as a linear bank and ditch, is not at all suggestive of a castle, despite being listed by King, and it is unlikely to have had any use after 1000CE.

The Ordnance Survey Map Grid Reference is SU50389842

Sources of information, references and further reading

This site's English Heritage (PastScape) Defra or Monument number is 237998
This site's County Historic Environment Record (formerly Sites and Monuments Record) number is D2918 'grey' literature, such as watching brief reports, held by H.E.R.s is often poorly referenced and is unlikely to be recorded in this website.

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The bibliography owes much to various bibliographies produced by John Kenyon for the Council for British Archaeology, the Castle Studies Group and others.
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