Hurst Hill, Oxfordshire

Hurst Hill or Cumnor Hurst is a 20.6-hectare (51-acre) biological and geological Site of Special Scientific Interest west of Oxford in Oxfordshire.^[1][2] It is a Geological Conservation Review site.^[3]

Hurst Hill

Site of Special Scientific Interest
Location	Oxfordshire
Grid reference	SP 476 041[1]
Interest	Biological Geological
Area	20.6 hectares (51 acres)[1]
Notification	1986[1]
Location map	Magic Map

The site is owned by All Souls College, Oxford,^[4] and its mosses and liverworts have been monitored for more than fifty years. The hill is also important geologically. In 1879 a fossil of a Camptosaurus prestwichii, a large herbivorous dinosaur dating to the Upper Jurassic 153 million years ago, was found on the site.^[5] The fossil belongs to a typically North African genus, and provides evidence of a land bridge across the proto-Atlantic in the Late Jurassic.^[6]

The hill is mentioned in Matthew Arnold's poem The Scholar Gipsy.^[4]