Fenny Castle Hill near Wookey (Somerset), a Sorman motte and bailey.
Apart from the earthworks we have already deseribed, burial mounds (Chapter 2) and hillforts (Chapter 5), the observant traveller through the countryside will have noticed other mounds of earth obviously ancient but not fitting into the categories of either burial mound or hillfort, and seemingly inexplicable. In fact some are ancient, others arc more recent; some are inexplicable, others arc easily explained. We must start with the biggest: the biggest mound and the biggest mystery - Silbury Hill (W'iltshire). This is the largest manmade hill in Fmrope, and completely unlike any other prehistoric
Earthwork. Archaeologists have always thought that it must be the burial place of some very important person, but despite three excavations, no trace of any burial has been found. For other, more esoteric, suggestions which have been made, see the description in ‘Places to Visit’.
Work began on Silbury Hill in the Neolithic period, and possibly of the same age is the enigmatic type of earthwork known as a cursus. No examples of these are given in ‘Places to Visit’ as they are visually unimpressive. The Dorset cursus extends for 6 miles and consists of two parallel banks with outer ditches, the ends closed by banks and ditches. There are a number of barrows close by, and archaeologists think that the cursus had an astronomical significance or was connected with a prehistoric cult of the dead, but there are no real clues to its meaning. Equally puzzling is the cursus near Stonehenge, which consists of one bank and ditch, about U miles long and 110 yards wide, d'he nearness to Stonehenge suggests that its use was associated with that monument; the eighteenth-century antiquary William Stukeley thought it might have been a chariot course. cursus was also found at 'Fhornborough (.North Yorkshire), over which a henge had later been constructed, and doubtless there were others which may have been destroyed by centuries of cultivation.
D'he bank forming a cursus was probably never very high, and they are unlikely to have been constructed as a boundary or defence. Other banks and ditches survive which may have played these roles, and they are known as dykes. .Most of these were built much more recently, during the Saxon period. Offa’s Dyke, possibly the best known of these earthworks, was built in the late eighth century and extends roughly along the length of the W elsh border. It was probably built to define the westerly frontier of Mercia, rather than being intended as an impregnable defence to keep out all the W elsh: it would be impossible to keep such a long earthwork permanently manned. Shorter earthworks have been built along other sections of the Mercian frontier. In East.
glia, dykes were built around Cambridge, possibly to try to hold back eastward incursions from. Mercia. Farther south, Wansdyke (Wiltshire) may have been built to divide W essex from the Mercians. .-Ml earthworks of this kind cannot be assumed to be of Saxon date, for earlier dykes do survive. Grim’s Ditch (Berkshire) dates from the Iron. Age. It was quite a long dyke across the Berkshire Downs and Chiltern Hills, probably delineating a boundary. Both Wansdyke and Grim’s Ditch are named after Woden the Norse god who among
The mysterious earthwork beside Llyti Gwyn (Poteys).
His many attributes was the god of warriors.
Late in the eleventh century the Normans overran England, and in order to maintain control they built many castles, fhe earliest of these survive in the form of earth mounds called mottes. On the flat top a wooden structure was built, and of course these have not survived. The motte was usually a cone-shaped mound, sometimes a reinforced natural knoll. A ditch surrounded it, and adjoining it was an enclosure surrounded by banks and called the bailey. The motte was the refuge and watch tower for the soldiers; the horses and food were kept in the bailey. Some variations on this basic design can sometimes be confused with prehistoric earthworks. On the Welsh border, a motte is often called a tump; in Wales, tomen.
In later centuries, abandoned mottes were good places to hold local festivities. F'lat-topped mounds were also convenient sites for moots or meetings, held mainly to deal with local legal and administrative affairs. Sometimes the meetings were held at crossroads, boundary meeting points, hillforts, prominent trees or stones or hills. Sometimes existing flat-topped mounds were used, sometimes the tops of barrows were flattened for this purpose, and sometimes special mounds were constructed. Look out for names like Moot-lowe or Mutlow, which indicate the former site of a moot.
Another type of earthwork which at first sight looks ancient and mysterious but in fact has a reasonable explanation is the so-called pillow-mound. 'I hese are low, oblong mounds around 2-3 feet tall, 50-90 feet long and 20—40 feet across, 'rhey are found in groups, and for some while their age and purpose were unknown, but they are now thought to have been artificial rabbit warrens, dating from medieval times onwards. Rabbits were once very important for their meat and fur, though nowadays it is hard to believe that they needed to be encouraged to breed by the provision of artificial warrens! Good examples can be seen at Llanfihangel nant Melan (Powys) where there are over thirty on a slope, and Thetford Warren (Norfolk).
Not all earthworks have yet been identified, however. There are many strange-shaped earthworks in the countryside whose date and purpose remain unknown. One example is shown here, a semicircular bank beside Llyn Gwyn near Nantmel (Powys).
World History
