Alternative name | Liddington Camp |
---|---|
Coordinates | 51°30′57″N1°42′01″W / 51.51584°N 1.70020°W |
OS grid reference | SU209797 |
Altitude | 277 m (909 ft) |
Part of | The Ridgeway |
Area | 3 hectares (7.4 acres) |
History | |
Founded | 7th Century BC |
Periods | Late Bronze Age and Iron Age |
Site notes | |
Excavation dates | 1976 |
Public access | yes |
Official name | Liddington Castle |
Designated | 10 March 1925 |
Reference no. | 1016312 |
Designation | Scheduled Monument Number 1016312 |
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. [1]
The site is on a commanding high point close to the Ridgeway and covers an area of 3 hectares (7.4 acres). Liddington Castle was one of the earliest hillforts in Britain, with first occupation dating to the 7th century BC. The earthworks consist of a relatively simple oval bank of timber and earth fronted by a ditch, with opposing causewayed entrances on the east and west sides. The western entrance was later blocked off and the eastern one may have been lined with sarsen stones. A palisade of wooden posts may have lined the top of the bank. During a later phase the bank and ditch were improved and a rampart of dumped chalk, excavated from the enlarged ditch, increased the height of the bank. [2]
The site was disturbed by flint mining between 1896 and 1900. The archaeologist A. D. Passmore collected "everything of human manufacture which was found" during this period, and the artefacts were deposited in the Ashmolean Museum. [2] Passmore wrote about these findings in the Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Magazine in 1914 (issue 38). [3] [4]
The hillfort was partially excavated in 1976 (sponsored by Lamar University and University of Birmingham). [3] The excavation revealed a large pit 1.5 metres (4 ft 11 in) in diameter and at least 2.4 metres (7 ft 10 in) deep. The bottom of the feature was not reached and it was interpreted by the archaeologists who dug it as a ritual shaft. Similar shafts have been recorded at Wapley Hill in Herefordshire and Cadbury Castle in Devon. The excavation also suggested the rampart was constructed in four phases, the latest being in during the Saxon period. Finds of pottery suggest Liddington Castle was abandoned during the fifth century BC, with perhaps some later re-occupation during the Roman period. [5] The excavation uncovered four fragments of human bone. [3]
Liddington Castle is sometimes suggested as a possible site of Mount Badon, and thus the location of the late fifth-century AD Battle of Mount Badon mentioned in Gildas's De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae, Nennius's Historia Brittonum and Annales Cambriae. There is, however, no archaeological evidence to indicate activity during this later period. [3]
The hillfort is 275 metres (902 ft) above sea level; there is an Ordnance Survey triangulation pillar. [6] The natural summit of the hill is a short distance to the south-east and at 276.5m (907ft) above sea level, with a prominence of 114m, and is classified as a Hump (hill with a hundred metre or greater prominence). It is the highest point in the Borough of Swindon. [7]
During the Second World War, the hilltop surrounding Liddington Castle was used as a Starfish site (a bombing decoy designed to appear as a burning town or city). [8] [9] [10] [lower-alpha 1] Evidence of this use remains in the form of the surviving command bunker, located 1 kilometre (0.62 mi) north-east of the fort, and a metal trough used to simulate explosions and fire. [11]
Liddington Castle was a favourite haunt of local writer of natural history and rural life, Richard Jefferies, who spent much of his spare time walking through the wide chalk expanses of the Marlborough Downs. It was on this summit that he relates in The Story of My Heart that his unusual sensitivity to nature began to induce in him a powerful inner awakening – a desire for a larger existence or reality. [12]
The hill is frequently used by the Thames Valley Hang Gliding and Paragliding Club. [13]
Uffington Castle is an early Iron Age univallate hillfort in Oxfordshire, England. It covers about 32,000 square metres and is surrounded by two earth banks separated by a ditch with an entrance in the western end. A second entrance in the eastern end was apparently blocked up a few centuries after it was built. The original defensive ditch was V-shaped with a small box rampart in front and a larger one behind it. Timber posts stood on the ramparts. Later the ditch was deepened and the extra material dumped on top of the ramparts to increase their size. A parapet wall of sarsen stones lined the top of the innermost rampart. It is very close to the Uffington White Horse on White Horse Hill.
Badbury Rings is an Iron Age hill fort and Scheduled Monument in east Dorset, England. It was in the territory of the Durotriges. In the Roman era a temple was located immediately west of the fort, and there was a Romano-British town known as Vindocladia a short distance to the south-west.
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.
Castle Dore is an Iron Age hill fort (ringfort) near Fowey in Cornwall, United Kingdom located at grid reference SX103548. It was probably occupied from the 5th or 4th centuries BC until the 1st century BC. It consists of two ditches surrounding a circular area 79 metres (259 ft) in diameter. Excavated in the 1930s, it is one of the most intensively investigated Iron Age hillforts in Cornwall.
Buckton Castle was a medieval enclosure castle near Carrbrook in Stalybridge, Greater Manchester, England. It was surrounded by a 2.8-metre-wide (9 ft) stone curtain wall and a ditch 10 metres (33 ft) wide by 6 metres (20 ft) deep. Buckton is one of the earliest stone castles in North West England and only survives as buried remains overgrown with heather and peat. It was most likely built and demolished in the 12th century. The earliest surviving record of the site dates from 1360, by which time it was lying derelict. The few finds retrieved during archaeological investigations indicate that Buckton Castle may not have been completed.
Starfish sites were large-scale night-time decoys created during the Blitz to simulate burning British cities. The aim was to divert German night bombers from their intended targets so they would drop their ordnance over the countryside. The sites were an extension of Colonel John Turner's decoy programme for airfields and factories. Following the bombing, and near destruction, of Coventry in November 1940, Turner was tasked with creating decoys for seven major cities.
Bury Castle is an Iron Age hillfort near Selworthy, Somerset, England. It has been designated as a scheduled monument.
Maiden Castle is an Iron Age hill fort, one of many fortified hill-top settlements constructed across Britain during the Iron Age, but one of only seven in the county of Cheshire in northern England. The hill fort was probably occupied from its construction in 600 BC until the Roman conquest of Britain in the 1st century AD. At this time the Cornovii tribe are recorded to have occupied parts of the surrounding area but, because they left no distinctive pottery or metalworking, their occupation has not been verified. Since then it has been quarried and used for military exercises. It is protected as a Scheduled Ancient Monument, and is owned by the National Trust. The hill fort is open to visitors, but unrestricted access to the site has resulted in it being classified as "at high risk" from erosion.
Kelsborrow Castle is an Iron Age hill fort in Cheshire, northern England. Hill forts were fortified hill-top settlements constructed across Britain during the Iron Age. It is one of only seven hill forts in the county of Cheshire and was probably in use for only a short time. In the 19th century, a bronze palstave was recovered from the site. It is protected as a Scheduled Ancient Monument.
Blewburton Hill is the site of an Iron Age hillfort located in Oxfordshire, in the southeast of England. It was a univallate hillfort. The area is mostly farmland with some small areas of wooded copse to the south and the northeast. The hill fort may have been occupied from the 4th century BC to the 1st century BC, and replaced a small settlement surrounded by a stockade, which is estimated to have been built in the 5th or 6th century BC.
Scratchbury Camp is the site of an Iron Age univallate hillfort on Scratchbury Hill, overlooking the Wylye valley about 1 km northeast of the village of Norton Bavant in Wiltshire, England. The fort covers an area of 37 acres (15 ha) and occupies the summit of the hill on the edge of Salisbury Plain, with its four-sided shape largely following the natural contours of the hill.
Chiselbury is the site of an Iron Age univallate hillfort located in Wiltshire. The hillfort is sub-circular in plan, and encloses an area of approximately 10.5 acres (460,000 sq ft). It is defined by an earthen rampart up to 3.6 metres (12 ft) in height and an external ditch, up to a maximum of 1.6 metres (5.2 ft) in depth. A gap in the southeastern side of the rampart, and a corresponding causeway across the ditch, is thought to be the original entrance and is associated with a small 'D' shaped embanked enclosure, which is apparently visible on aerial photographs. Although the enclosure has subsequently been degraded by ploughing, it is still apparent as a series of low earthworks.
Bratton Castle is a bivallate Iron Age built hill fort on Bratton Down, at the western edge of the Salisbury Plain escarpment. The hill fort comprises two circuits of ditch and bank which together enclose a pentagonal area of 9.3 hectares.
Grovely Castle is the site of an Iron Age univallate hill fort in the parish of Steeple Langford, in Wiltshire. The remaining ramparts stand approximately 3.2 m (10 ft) high, with 1.5 m (4.9 ft) deep ditches, although ploughing has damaged the earthworks in some parts of the site. Excavations have uncovered the remains of five human skeletons within the ramparts. Entrances are in the south-west and north-east corners of the hillfort. A circular enclosure of 35 to 40 m is evident in aerial photographs of the hillfort interior. There is also a later bank and ditch which runs through the hill-fort from south-west to north-east, and is probably part of an extensive surrounding Celtic field system.
Cornish promontory forts, commonly known in Cornwall as cliff castles, are coastal equivalents of the hill forts and Cornish "rounds" found on Cornish hilltops and slopes. Similar coastal forts are found on the north–west European seaboard, in Normandy, Brittany and around the coastlines of the British Isles, especially in Wales, Scotland and Ireland. Many are known in southwest England, particularly in Cornwall and its neighbouring county, Devon. Two have been identified immediately west of Cornwall, in the Isles of Scilly.
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.
Beacon Hill, also known as Harting Beacon, is a hillfort on the South Downs, in the county of West Sussex in southern England. The hillfort is located in the parish of Elsted and Treyford, in Chichester District. It is a Scheduled Ancient Monument with a list entry identification number of 1015915. The hilltop enclosure is dated to the Late Bronze Age, from the 8th to 6th centuries BC. The hillfort defences were renewed during the Late Iron Age.
Hollingbury Castle, also known as Hollingbury Camp and Hollingbury Hillfort, is an Iron Age hillfort on the northern edge of Brighton, in East Sussex, England. It is adjacent to Hollingbury Park Golf Course.
Berth Hill is an Iron Age hillfort in Staffordshire, England, about 5 miles (8.0 km) south-west of Newcastle-under-Lyme, and near the village of Maer. It is a scheduled monument. Other forms of its name have been Bryth, Bruff and Burgh Hill.
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.
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