This curious feature lies just south of the Old Slade bog close by the Childown boundary.

The sketch below attempts to show the earthwork before erosion softened its shape.  It is reminiscent of the Roman style - formally rectangular, playing card corners. It has a raised T-shaped road or causeway inside.  

The Slade Earthwork Image: David Stokes

There are entrance causeways in north and south banks and a half causeway in the east bank.  If these are probed they seem to have a more solid surface about 15cm below soil level.  

The causeway on the east side shows much disturbance, including what appears to be a recent exploration trench, so is difficult to interpret.  

The earthwork is located about 20m from an ancient parish boundary - an old bank and ditch.

A roman coin was found a few hundred metres south along this track.

Old maps show a road leading from the settlement at Gracious Pond, SE in the direction of this earthwork and onwards in a straight line to Stonehill Road.  If the line is followed in the opposite direction, NW, then it passes:-

• through what was formally Gracious Pond itself
• just to the north of Glovers Pond (Tringham in 1934 wrote "a ditch between Gracious Pond and Glovers Pond which puzzles me.  It is at too high a level to have carried water, .. the labour involved must have been considerable, it has nothing to do with the trenches made by troops  in training during the Great War ^2,p23 )
• just to the north of the earthwork at Albury Bottom (where a causeway on this alignment can still be seen).

Here are some suggestion for its origin:-

Iron Age.

It is within 500m of, and aligned to, a line running between the Iron Age hillforts at St George's Hill, Weybridge and Caesar's Camp, Easthampstead.

Built on both an old road and parish boundary, it may have served as a 'gateway' to a tribal area or an interchange between tribes (perhaps to act as neutral gathering places used at intervals to exchange goods or hold seasonal fairs ^{1, p70}. )

Roman

Its alignment, with an eastern partial causeway facing 107 degrees, is the same as the Romano-Celtic temples found in Surrey at Farley Heath and Titsey.  Perhaps it had some pagan religious purpose during the Iron and Roman ages?

It has similarities which the multi-ditched playing card shaped 'royal' enclosure at Fison Way, Thetford.^{3 p412}

A marching camp.

Its Roman form and the finding of Roman coins nearby is suggestive.  But it is considered too fresh, and at 24m wide, too small to be Roman.

Saxon

Being on a boundary it has been suggested that it may have been a ritual place for a moot (ritual meeting place).

Medieval

The triple bank, double ditch, regularity and multiple entrances appear to be overly complicated.  It may be that they were purely for display of status in the same way that late medieval peoples with pretensions to importance often built a moat around their house.  Maybe the ditches are really moats? - there seem to be small trenches either side of the causeways that may have allowed water to flow between the ditches.  But there is no sign outside of the enclosure of a ditch bringing flowing water.   Could there have been once a high status house inside the enclosure?  It lies on the parish boundary on a possible ancient track (see above) so may have been a kind of entrance or hunting lodge.

It may have been used for the keeping of pigs.  The land is too bogy and acid to be arable and was likely to have been woodland. In the autumn pigs would have been taken to the woods to fatten on the acorn crop. The enclosure may have been a pig pen or maybe even to protect the swineherd from disturbance by the pigs.

Modern

19th century maps show a turf house at this place so maybe it was an enclosure for a shepherd's, swine herd's or forester's hut made of turves?

Was it perhaps built fairly recently by a local landowner as a folly.

If you click in the left margin you can read a transcript of the findings of the archaeologist, Eric Gardner, who explored the earthwork and described it in 1924 in the Surrey Archaeological Collections, Vol 35, p.105.  Unfortunately he does not come to any firm conclusion regarding its age or purpose (he says it is similar to the Bats Hogstye pig pen near Aldershot so is likely to have been a pig pen; but that is as logical as saying that Bats Hogstye is similar to the "bee garden" at Chobham so is likely to be a bee garden!)

References:-

1.    Hidden Depths,  Roger Hunt, Pub: Surrey Archaeological Society 2002

2.    The Story of Longcross, H. J. F. Tringham, 1934

3    Britain BC, Francis Pryor. Harper Collins 2003