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Roulston Scar

Hillfort

Fieldnotes

Setting out for the day I had written down points of interest and had an idea where i was going, and to make things a little easier, foolishly forgot to pick up all my grid reference details from the kitchen table!

I hadn't on this occasion read around the subject as fully as i could have done, and only when I returned home did i realise the whole area is Roulston Scar (I have always known it as Sutton Bank). We parked at the top, near the gliding club and headed roughly NEE to the fortification as marked on the OS map. Crossing a small valley we scrabbled up the sides and headed into the woods. I all honesty, an easier way would have been to park at the top of High Town Bank Road and walk down.

In any case the length and size of the fortification was quite impressive, and surrounded by woodland. Its termination point seems a little odd and I wonder if it maybe ran at some point to the top of Hell Hole SE523816. It certainly seems like this now wooded stretch is all that remains of the fortification. Walking along it's ditch West to East with it's Southerly side being easily 5 feet high in places, it wasn't difficult to imagine what it once looked like, and when you look out over the flat land that Roulston Scar rises from, it isn't difficult to imagine why fortifications where built there.

The thing that is a little tricky though, is that information about the Hillfort suggests that it's perimeter terminates before the small valley we crossed. Maybe this was an additional fortification. The OS map shows a tumulus in the fields near by, although all signs of this are now gone.
Posted by robokid
10th March 2008ce
Edited 10th March 2008ce

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