Category: Lob In The Landscape

Friday 1st April 2016:

Battlesbury Camp, Warminster, according to the Heritage Daily website, is No.6 in a list of the ten must-see Iron Age hill forts in Britain. “There are around 3,300 structures that can be classed as hill forts or similar ‘defended enclosures’ within Britain, all worthy of considering.” High praise indeed then that Battlesbury should be among the ten most impressive examples, but no surprise to those of us in Warminster who take a great interest in such things.

Battlesbury Camp is the site of an Iron Age bivallate hill fort on Battlesbury Hill in Wiltshire in South West England. Excavations and surveys at the site have uncovered various finds and archaeological data.

Battlesbury occupies the summit of an irregular point of down, with its defences following the natural contours of the hill, and being by nature of the site almost inaccessible on the west and north-east sides. It has triple ditches and ramparts for the most part, with double on the south-east side. The site encloses 23.5 acres in all. There are entrances at the north-west and north-east corners.

Pits found within the fortifications contained late Iron Age pottery, the hub of a chariot wheel, an iron carpenter’s saw, a latch-lifter for a hut door, querns, whetstones, sling stones, and animal bones. These all indicate a permanent occupation and date from the 1st century BC. Unfortunately it is suspected that the hill’s inhabitants came to a violent end, due to the many graves containing men, women and children outside of the north-west entrance. It can only be guessed at whether Roman legions put people to the sword, or if this was the result of intertribal warfare sometime before the Roman conquest.

To see the list of the ten most impressive Iron Age hill forts in Britain, click on:
http://www.heritagedaily.com/2014/07/top-ten-iron-age-hill-forts-in-britain/100759