A story recorded by Henry Bett in 1950 tells of a rich treasure hidden at the foot of the hawthorn bush from which the hill took its name, and of the strange sequence of events by which it was discovered. A poor man living nearby had a dream that if he travelled to London and waited on London Bridge, he would learn something that would make him rich. And so he made the journey, despite the apparent folly of such an errand. After he had been hangingabout on London Bridge for some time, a Londoner asked him what he was doing there, and the Berkshire man told his story. The Londoner laughed at him, saying that he himself had dreamed a pot of gold by a thurn tree on a hill – but he wouldnever be such a fool as to go looking for it, and the only sensible thing to do was to go home. The countryman thanked him for his advice, but as soon as he was back home he dug at the foot of the tree, and there, sure enough, was a pot of gold.
His luck did not end there. The pot had some writing on it, but in a language he coukd not understand. However, he kept the pot as a memento, and one day a passing student from Oxford happened to see it and tod him the writing was in Latin, but made little sense; it said ‘Where this stood, there’s another, twice as good.’ Once again, the countryman thanked the other, but kept his own counsel. Then he returned to the hawthorn tree, dug deeper, and found a second and much larger pot of gold.