Ambresbury Banks is the name given to the remains of an Iron Age hill fort in Epping Forest, Essex, England.
Ambresbury Banks is the name given to the remains of an Iron Age hill fort in Epping Forest, Essex, England.
The fort encircles an area of 4.5 hectares (11 acres) and is surrounded by a single bank of 2 m (6 ft) in height, together with a ditch. There is a small counterscarp bank on the outside lip of the ditch. The defences now have 6 major breaks in their circumference; only one appears to be original. This is approached from the north west by a trapezoidal causeway. The ends of the bank at this point were revetted with coursed puddingstone blocks. The width of the passageway was sufficient to suggest double gates, but no central postholes were found. Finds at the site have included shards of red, grey and black pottery, flints and flint arrow heads, and lumps of baked clay. [1] These suggest a construction date of around 700 BC and occupation until 42 AD. [2]
The area within and around the fort is now completely wooded, although in Iron Age times it would have been cleared of trees to enable a better field of view, and for agriculture. This has been suggested by evidence of wild service trees, which are an indicator of regrown forest.
The Ambresbury Banks site has been examined archaeologically 9 times; the first excavation was by Augustus Pitt-Rivers in 1881. Ambresbury Banks is a scheduled monument. [1]
According to legend, it is the site of the last stand by Boudica against the Romans in the year 61. There is no evidence to support this. Another legend contends that the construction and name derive from the fifth-century hero Ambrosius Aurelianus, so contradicting the supposed connection to the first-century battle; [3] other theories for the location of the battlefield include Mancetter in Warwickshire and Kings Cross in London. [4] Nevertheless, Ambresbury Banks forms, along with Loughton Camp, Wallbury Camp, Little Hadham, Barkway and Littlebury, a line of hill-forts that arguably delineate the disputed territories of the warring Trinovantes and Catuvellauni. [5]
Combe Hill is a causewayed enclosure, near Eastbourne in East Sussex, on the northern edge of the South Downs. It consists of an inner circuit of ditches and banks, incomplete where it meets a steep slope on its north side, and the remains of an outer circuit. Causewayed enclosures were built in England from shortly before 3700 BC until at least 3500 BC; they are characterized by the full or partial enclosure of an area with ditches that are interrupted by gaps, or causeways. Their purpose is not known; they may have been settlements, meeting places, or ritual sites. The historian Hadrian Allcroft included the site in his 1908 book Earthwork of England, and in 1930 E. Cecil Curwen listed it as a possible Neolithic site in a paper which attempted to provide the first list of all the causewayed enclosures in England.
The Lunt Roman Fort is the archaeological site of a Roman fort, of unknown name, in the Roman province of Britannia. It is open to the public and located in the village of Baginton on the south eastern outskirts of Coventry. The fort has now been fully excavated and partially reconstructed; the wooden gateway rebuild was led by archaeologist Margaret Rylatt, using the same tools and techniques that the military engineers of the Roman Army would have used. In 2001, Anglo Saxon artefacts dating to Sub-Roman Britain were discovered on the site.
Navan Fort is an ancient ceremonial monument near Armagh, Northern Ireland. According to tradition it was one of the great royal sites of pre-Christian Gaelic Ireland and the capital of the Ulaidh. It is a large circular hilltop enclosure—marked by a bank and ditch—inside which is a circular mound and the remains of a ring barrow. Archeological investigations show that there were once buildings on the site, including a huge roundhouse-like structure that has been likened to a temple. In a ritual act, this timber structure was filled with stones, deliberately burnt down and then covered with earth to create the mound which stands today. It is believed that Navan was a pagan ceremonial site and was regarded as a sacred space. It features prominently in Irish mythology, especially in the tales of the Ulster Cycle. According to the Oxford Dictionary of Celtic Mythology, "the [Eamhain Mhacha] of myth and legend is a far grander and mysterious place than archeological excavation supports".
Oldbury Camp is the largest Iron Age hill fort in south-eastern England. It was built in the 1st century BC by Celtic British tribes on a hilltop west of Ightham, Kent, in a strategic location overlooking routes through the Kentish Weald. The fort comprises a bank and ditch enclosing an area of about 50 hectares, with entrances at the north-east and south ends. Wooden gates barred the entrances. Archaeological excavations carried out in the 1930s and 1980s found that the hill fort's interior had probably not been permanently occupied. It had been abandoned around 50 BC and the north-east gate had been burned down, possibly due to a Roman invasion. The wooded southern part of Oldbury Camp is now owned and managed by the National Trust and is open to the public.
Liddington Castle, locally called Liddington Camp, is a late Bronze Age and early Iron Age univallate hillfort in the English county of Wiltshire, and a scheduled monument.
Cissbury Ring is an 84.2-hectare (208-acre) biological Site of Special Scientific Interest north of Worthing in West Sussex. It is owned by the National Trust and is designated a Scheduled monument for its Neolithic flint mine and Iron Age hillfort.
Chanctonbury Ring is a prehistoric hill fort atop Chanctonbury Hill on the South Downs, on the border of the civil parishes of Washington and Wiston in the English county of West Sussex. A ridgeway, now part of the South Downs Way, runs along the hill. It forms part of an ensemble of associated historical features created over a span of more than 2,000 years, including round barrows dating from the Bronze Age to the Saxon periods and dykes dating from the Iron Age and Roman periods.
Hatfield Forest is a 403.2-hectare (996-acre) biological Site of Special Scientific Interest in Essex, three miles east of Bishop's Stortford. It is also a National Nature Reserve and a Nature Conservation Review site. It is owned and managed by the National Trust. A medieval warren in the forest is a Scheduled Monument.
Embury Beacon is the site of an Iron Age promontory fort on the west of the Hartland Peninsula, north of Bude and west of Clovelly, in north Devon. The fort has almost entirely been lost to coastal erosion, but a fraction of the eastern ramparts still exist at approximately 150 metres (490 ft) above Sea Level. It is part of the National Trust property of Bideford Bay and Hartland, which also includes two other hill forts at Windbury Head and Bucks Mills earthworks. The site’s name suggests it was the location of a beacon, possibly during the Elizabethan period, but there is no archaeological evidence of this.
Loughton Camp is an Iron Age Hill fort in Epping Forest, one mile (1.6 km) northwest of the town of Loughton.
Ringsbury Camp is an Iron Age hill fort, thought to date from approximately the year 50BC, in the civil parish of Purton in Wiltshire, England. The site is a scheduled monument.
The Trundle is an Iron Age hillfort on St Roche's Hill about 4 miles (6 km) north of Chichester, West Sussex, England, built on the site of a causewayed enclosure, a form of early Neolithic earthwork found in northwestern Europe. Causewayed enclosures were built in England from shortly before 3700 BC until at least 3500 BC; they are characterized by the full or partial enclosure of an area with ditches that are interrupted by gaps, or causeways. Their purpose is not known; they may have been settlements, meeting places, or ritual sites. Hillforts were built as early as 1000 BC, in the Late Bronze Age, and continued to be built through the Iron Age until shortly before the Roman occupation.
Caesar's Camp is an Iron Age hill fort around 2400 years old. It is located just in Crowthorne civil parish to the south of Bracknell in the English county of Berkshire. It falls within the Windsor Forest and is well wooded, although parts of the fort have now been cleared of some trees. The area is managed by the Forestry Commission but owned by Crown Estate, and is open and accessible to the public. The hill fort covers an area of about 17.2 acres and is surrounded by a mile-long ditch, making it one of the largest in southern England.
Whitehawk Camp is the remains of a causewayed enclosure on Whitehawk Hill near Brighton, East Sussex, England. Causewayed enclosures are a form of early Neolithic earthwork that were built in England from shortly before 3700 BC until at least 3500 BC, characterized by the full or partial enclosure of an area with ditches that are interrupted by gaps, or causeways. Their purpose is not known; they may have been settlements, or meeting places, or ritual sites. The Whitehawk site consists of four roughly concentric circular ditches, with banks of earth along the interior of the ditches evident in some places. There may have been a timber palisade on top of the banks. Outside the outermost circuit there are at least two more ditches, one of which is thought from radiocarbon evidence to date to the Bronze Age, about two thousand years after the earliest dated activity at the site.
Portingbury Hills or Portingbury Rings is a hill in Hatfield Forest, Hatfield Broad Oak, Essex, United Kingdom.
Bigbury Camp is a univallate hill fort in the parish of Harbledown and Rough Common in Kent in England. The fort is a Scheduled Ancient Monument, with a list entry identification number of 1005169. Bigbury Camp is the only confirmed Iron Age hill fort in east Kent. It is managed by Kent Wildlife Trust.
Danish Camp is an Iron Age fortified settlement in Shoeburyness in Essex. It is a Scheduled Monument under the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Areas Act 1979, list number 1017206. The site is in the Gunners Park and Shoebury Ranges nature reserve, which is managed by the Essex Wildlife Trust.
Barkhale Camp is a Neolithic causewayed enclosure, an archaeological site on Bignor Hill, on the South Downs in West Sussex, England. Causewayed enclosures were built in England from shortly before 3700 BC until at least 3500 BC; they are characterized by the full or partial enclosure of an area with ditches that are interrupted by gaps, or causeways. Their purpose is not known; they may have been settlements, meeting places, or ritual sites. The Barkhale Camp enclosure was first identified in 1929, by John Ryle, and was surveyed the following year by E. Cecil Curwen, who listed it as a possible Neolithic site in a 1930 paper which was the first attempt to list all the causewayed enclosures in England.
South Weald Camp was a hillfort based in South Weald, Brentwood, Essex, England. Roughly circular in plan, the fort covered 2.8 hectares, with a suggested construction date in the late Iron Age, from the 1st century BC to the 1st century AD. The location is associated in this period with the Catuvellauni and the Trinovantes.
The Boudican revolt was an armed civilian uprising by native Celtic Britons against the Roman Empire during the Roman conquest of Britain. It took place circa AD 60–61 in the Roman province of Britain, and was led by Boudica, the Queen of the Iceni tribe. The uprising was motivated by the Romans' failure to honour an agreement they had made with Boudica's husband, Prasutagus, regarding the succession of his kingdom upon his death, and by the brutal mistreatment of Boudica and her daughters by the occupying Romans.
Coordinates: 51°41′01″N0°04′42″E / 51.6835°N 0.0784°E