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Hill Forts (British History)
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frank h started off a new though not untrodden path which is worth having a thread to itself

From frank h

Mick Harper wrote:
the existing pattern of village naming suggests such agrarian settlements were necessarily established on the lowlands and up river valleys

...well...OK, as a starting point. The trouble with this grand-scale epic-style history is that the west of the British Isles is indeed worse for agriculture than the east, but the village-name pattern might just reflect two different people coming at the place from two different directions. And by the way the difference might arise from the fact that one half has been 'worked on' by agriculturalists for several thousand years.

There are approximately 70 hill forts located on regular road maps, mostly in S and SW England, through the West Midlands up to the Wirral, with some in the NE to Edinburgh and a few in E Scotland. Archaeologists report that they were only occupied during the middling centuries of the first millennium BC, practiced mixed farming and were regularly attacked. (T.Darvill, Prehistoric Britain, 1998).

Significantly, the map indicates that every hill fort currently has either one to several English language-type place name 'bury' villages or towns within 5-10 miles distance, and frequently 'worths' as well, generally situated on the better land at lower level. Where hill forts are absent but the area occupied, such as the Peak district through to the uplands of south Yorkshire, the region is also surrounded by 'bury's and 'worths' sited on the lower land. Similarly, the Yorkshire moors. Notably, the 'bury' is hardly evident elsewhere in the landscape.

Presumably, the bury-type is representative of defended Iron Age ditch and palisade settlements practising specialised farming which encroached on hill fort territory, as in the investigated and reported abandoned site at Little Woodbury, Wilts. Thus perhaps providing a clue to pre-Roman spoken English?
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From frank h

Mick Harper wrote:
... the existing pattern of village naming suggests such agrarian settlements were necessarily established on the lowlands and up river valleys

Addendum to previous on Hill Forts and Burys

By including Lincoln, Norwich, Bury St Edmunds and Canterbury as possible hill forts plus the known hill forts in the East of England, which all have surrounding burys, boroughs and worths, a clear pattern of development across the country can be observed.
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Mick Harper
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I am reading The Tribes of Britain by David Miles. Though a pillar of orthodoxy (Chief Archaeologist, English Heritage etc etc) I find he is quite sensible. His stuff on the hill forts is specially good and I will reply when I have finished it. I should add that this is the first bit of orthodoxy I have read for some years and am surprised at how orthodoxy is so closely knocking on the door...if only they would...
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DPCrisp


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...Hill Forts and Burys...

Run that by us again, Frank. It seems to be important, but I don't follow.

Burgh is common in Scotland and bury/borough is common in England, but absent from the West Country and Wales where the greatest concentrations of hillforts are. Innit?

How do we show a connection between a hillfort and a village 10 miles away? By my reckoning, everywhere in England is within about 10 miles of a hillfort. Does Darvill say there are only 70?

Worth as a place name element seems a conceptually good match for worth/value and wort/root. The 'homestead' meaning is of unknown origin and is surely derived by the scholars from the use of ordinary language to name places.
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From frank h

DPCrisp wrote:
...Hill Forts and Burys...

Run that by us again, Frank. It seems to be important, but I don't follow.
Burgh is common in Scotland and bury/borough is common in England, but absent from the West Country and Wales where the greatest concentrations of hillforts are. Innit?

How do we show a connection between a hillfort and a village 10 miles away? By my reckoning, everywhere in England is within about 10 miles of a hillfort. Does Darvill say there are only 70?

Worth as a place name element seems a conceptually good match for worth/value and wort/root. The 'homestead' meaning is of unknown origin and is surely derived by the scholars from the use of ordinary language to name places.

It is best to plot the burys and boroughs in particular (and worths) one by one in green with the hill forts in red, when it then becomes readily apparent that a pattern is exhibited, even the direction of settlement flow. The hill fort-bury distance gap looks to be related to topography ie. hilly or flat.

I used the AA Big Road Atlas, starting at Dartmoor, which shows most of the hill forts other than SE, E England and the east Midlands --use the web under hill forts and specific county for the latter.

As for Scotland, the hill forts lie on the east side from the Northumberland to Inverness -- a coast line with many 'English' place names and strategically placed burghs.

In the case of Wales the dozen listed Iron Age hill forts in Wikipedia are mainly along the marches, which all have nearby burys. The rest and the couple in Cornwall seem to be defensive sites around the coast.

A coloured-in pictorial display of Iron Age hill forts to 'bury's is quite startling!
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Frank, could you put these maps up? They seem to be a bit of break-through. Keimpe, Ishmael and other technical denizens of the deep will assist if you don't know how.
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From frank h

Mick Harper wrote:
Frank, could you put these maps up? They seem to be a bit of break-through.

While I'm trying to deal with digitising the maps, in the interim the iron age hill fort-bury settlement flow looks to be:

1. From Lincolnshire north to the Yorks moors, south/SW to the Thames, east into Norfolk, west to the Welsh marches, up and around the Peak district into Lancs.
2. A separate development can be seen from points on the south coast moving up to the Thames and westwards into Devon.
3. Another separate development from the northern bank of the Thames estuary through Essex to Bury St.Edmunds.
4. A separate development from eastern Kent heading westwards.
5. A separate development along the coast from Northumberland heading in an arc towards the Paisley area of Scotland.
6. Separate developments along the coast north of the Firth of Forth.
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DPCrisp


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A coloured-in pictorial display of Iron Age hill forts to 'bury's is quite startling!

Does it look anything like this, "Distribution of iron age forts in England and Wales" from James Dyer's Hillforts of England and Wales?



What do you take to be the implication of this correlation between bury/burgh/boroughs and hillforts, Frank? That the placenames post-date the building of the forts, but pre-date the Anglo-Saxons who found them disused? Who do you think built them?

Have you also looked at the Belgic oppida? And the Danish forts? And the Norman mottes?

Do you know how many of these were re-used/re-built by their successors?

When it comes to deciding on when placenames were assigned, I think we have to pay careful attention to the "fragmentation" of villages. I think it is a mistake to consider the village to be a cluster of buildings (even if I talk that way sometimes). On that model, many farms, manor houses, workshops, isolated cottages and so on are not in villages at all; you can drive out of one village and pass through some undefined territory before reaching the next village.

Instead, I think the village is the area that encompasses the houses, fields, farm yards, mills, sand pits and whatever else. This certainly appears to be how the compilers of the Domesday Book thought of villages. On this model you are never nowhere at all: somewhere between two clusters of buldings, you cross from one village into the next.

But the clusters nevertheless get their own names. (Road maps, signs, route planners et al perpetuate the notion that a village is a point.) Village names like North End, Wood End, Water End, Mill End, Bury End... seem to belong to larger village districts together with some of their neighbours, perhaps including ridges, woods, dells, coldharbours and so on. And then there are the Upper, Middle and Nether names, so-and-so Magna and Parva, Winterbourne This, That and the Other... Perhaps Milton Bryan and Milton Keynes are one place divided between two Norman barons.

Kensworth was one village in Domesday and later reckoned as four, though no long mental journeys were undertaken in naming them: Kensworth Common, Kensworth Green, Kensworth Lynch and Church End. Nowadays, it's two: either Kensworth and Church End or Kensworth Common and Kensworth, respectively. The Lynch is somewhat left out in either case. Church End outside North Frodingham could surely be fairly called Frodingham Church End; and 'North' was surely added when it became necessary to distinguish it from the Frodingham at Scunthorpe.

So with all this reshuffling going on, I would urge caution when it comes to deciding between the part of the village named for the bury/burgh/borough there and a whole village named or founded after the thing was built.

NB. Limbury can only refer to the Wauluds Bank earthwork at Leagrave, but Wauluds Bank predates the Iron Age hillforts by a couple of millennia.
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From frank h

DPCrisp wrote:
Does it look anything like this, "Distribution of iron age forts in England and Wales" from James Dyer's Hillforts of England and Wales?

The distribution looks similar, but I have only used the principal hill forts.
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From frank h

DPCrisp wrote:
What do you take to be the implication of this correlation between bury/burgh/boroughs and hillforts, Frank? That the placenames post-date the building of the forts, but pre-date the Anglo-Saxons who found them disused?Who do you think built them?

According to the model being proposed the Anglo-Saxons appear to have arrived during the Iron Age?
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The distribution looks similar, but I have only used the principal hill forts.

Howdya mean, "principal"?
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According to the model being proposed the Anglo-Saxons appear to have arrived during the Iron Age?

I'm not with you at all. You mean any indications that English was here earlier means the Anglo-Saxons were here earlier, too? Please explain.
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From frank h

DPCrisp wrote:
According to the model being proposed the Anglo-Saxons appear to have arrived during the Iron Age?

I'm not with you at all. You mean any indications that English was here earlier means the Anglo-Saxons were here earlier, too? Please explain.

The Iron Age Hill fort/Bury plot indicates that burys seem to have been placed strategically around each fort moving from one fort to the next, thus suggesting a relationship. The forts were occupied and defended but abandoned during the mid centuries of the first century B.C. The builders of the burys presumably were the protagonists. Maybe they were the Anglo-Saxons arriving during the Iron Age and not when the Romans left, history is vague on this point.
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From frank h

Dan wrote:
Howdya mean, "principal"?

They are the Iron Age hill forts listed for each county and usually quoted in Wikipedia, reconfirmed by other web sites and road maps. They are the ones with massive banks and ditches for defence. The best example probably being Maiden Castle.
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The Iron Age Hill fort/Bury plot indicates that burys seem to have been placed strategically around each fort moving from one fort to the next, thus suggesting a relationship.

I'm still not with you, Frank. As far as I'm aware, a borough/burgh/bury is a fortification or 'castle'. What do you mean by the burys that "seem to have been placed strategically around each fort"? Villages/towns with borough/burgh/bury in the name?

Is the relationship not that the villages (or "sectors" of villages) were named (or renamed) for the forts?

The forts were occupied and defended, but abandoned during the mid centuries of the first century B.C. The builders of the burys presumably were the protagonists.

Are you saying there is evidence, albeit circumstantial, of an invasion that forced the abandonment of the hillforts? All the hillforts, Cornwall and Wales included? Are there any other indications of such an invasion?

Maybe they were the Anglo-Saxons arriving during the Iron Age and not when the Romans left, history is vague on this point.

I'm all for Saxons, or Danes or anyone else in the frame being at large in Britain before or during the Roman era -- Was Boudicca a Celt? -- but what is the evidence for anyone in particular? The Anglo-Saxons may have been about, but they don't have a special presence until after the Romans, do they? What is the evidence for the Belgae like, before (or during?) the Romans?
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