Evergreen Dazed
|
Re: New online atlas of UK and Ireland hillforts
Jun 24, 2017, 09:18
|
|
Rhiannon wrote:
Anyway, let's just hold our horses on new pronouncements eh, because right now it looks like the link to this new database isn't even working? Unless you have an alternative one.
https://hillforts.arch.ox.ac.uk
|
Rhiannon
|
Re: New online atlas of UK and Ireland hillforts
Jun 24, 2017, 14:42
|
Well it's certainly an atlas of hillforts.
Hope it's useful to someone somewhere.
I'll be staying here.
|
ryaner
|
Re: New online atlas of UK and Ireland hillforts
Jun 25, 2017, 22:27
|
|
Well, it's actually quite nice and easy to use and there's a few entries that might encourage me to venture out. Is that mass of entries around the Scottish borders really comprised of just hillforts? It's more than hillforts, isn't it? If so, then what defines a hillfort? Would a better title be 'an atlas of hillforts, promontory forts and various other iron-age habitation sites'? Small gripes really.
|
tjj
|
Edited Aug 07, 2017, 20:28
Re: Guardian article by Hugh Thomson
Aug 07, 2017, 20:20
|
A Guardian article by Hugh Thomson - who wrote The Green Road Into The Trees a few years back. Worth a read.
https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2017/aug/07/walking-ancient-hillforts-wiltshire-downs-england-atlas-of-hillforts?CMP=share_btn_fb
"They stand in a clear line along the Wiltshire Downs facing north: perhaps facing an enemy whose identity we do not know. In the bright sunshine of late spring, I could see the hillforts stretching away along the escarpment – Barbury, then Liddington, and finally Uffington, with its famous chalk white horse. They may have been begun in the bronze age, but reached their apogee in the iron age, in the first millennium BC ... "
|
tjj
|
Re: Ancient road between Barbury and Bincknoll
Aug 08, 2017, 11:06
|
|
tjj wrote:
Posted this yesterday as at it quick glance it seemed interesting but is actually quite an unsatisfying piece (sorry Hugh). He talks about Barbury Castle, a place much loved by me, but fails to mention the unsung but important Bincknoll Castle which lies to the north of Barbury approximately half way between Barbury, the Ridgeway and the low lying vale - now the site of modern Swindon. Up there, with views across to Barbury and the Ridgeway in on direction and out across to the Cotswolds in the other, it feels quite viable that in past times this would have been an important strategic site of defence.
A friend of mine recently pre-walking a walk he is planning to lead from Wroughton to Bincknoll Castle was told by the landowner whose path across a field friend was on that the path is part of an ancient road which goes from close to Bincknoll Castle over to Barbury Castle where is comes out on the Ridgeway - what we would now call a green road. Still there apparently although I haven't yet walked it's length.
The landowner told my friend that metal detectorists are currently seeking permission to investigate ...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/domesday/dblock/GB-408000-177000/page/13
|
