Visited 22.12.2008, walking from Winchcombe via Belas Knap longbarrow and then along the Cotswold Way. This is the second time I have visited Cleeve Hill using this route, but since the last time the Cotswold Way appears to have been re-routed, so from Belas Knap the route now plunges down a steep wooded valley and then back up the other side onto the hill. By the time I reached the hill it was covered in thick fog and rather lacking in recognisable landmarks! Eventually I found the 13th hole of the golf course which rather spoils visits to this site. The golf course covers much of the top of the hill, around the summits - on a summer's day visitors are advised to watch out for golf balls! Even in thick "pea-soup" fog on a Monday morning after the midwinter solstice, there were golfers (mainly heard rather than seen through the fog). Having said all of that, there is much to appreciate on the hill. At 330m it is the highest point in the Cotswolds. There is a hillfort, an impressive linear bank/ditch dyke, and an earthwork known as The Ring. There are remains of various barrows, but these are very difficult to see (even without the fog) and an enigmatic stone block known as "Huddlestone's Table" of an uncertain date (see the entries for The Ring and Cleeve Cloud Hillfort for more on some of these features). Cleeve Hill can be visited by car if you have one and is also served by a good bus service from Cheltenham or Winchcombe.
Visited August 2002. As you approach Cleeve Cloud from Cheltenham the sheer size of the escarpment is amazing. The ridge rises sheer from the Severn Valley floor up to over 300 metres (the highest part of the Cotswold Hills). This is why I have defined it as a sacred hill, there seems to be real reverence for it in the landscape. The sense of peace you have whilst walking round and taking in the view and the landscape is almost to see the world as the ancients saw it. The modern world can try to interfere, note the numbly positioned golf club nearby, but on Cleeve Cloud I felt the atmosphere of a different time.
This is an excellent area. There is a hillfort, a settlement and ancient dykes criss-crossing this hill. Called Cleeve Cloud locally, this is as close as you could get to an ancient landscape in the Cotswolds. No enclosure, sheep wandering over the summit and a superb view over the Severn Vale to Wales.
The actual 'Cleeve Hill' itself has an earthwork surrounding it but walk along the ridge (the Cloud) you will come to a small hill fort that uses the sheer drop of the ridge as its forth side.
The Ring lies on the north-western side of Cleeve Hill and can be visited easily either from the Hill itself or from the road skirting the north-west edge of the hill (Cheltenham - Winchcombe). It is low-lying earthwork bank and ditch, too small for defensive purposes and possibly constructed for stock-control purposes, most likely during the Iron Age.
Adjacent to The Ring is small circular feature which may be the remains of a Bronze Age round barrow (as recorded on the 1884 OS map), but which could equally be an Iron Age hut site (as recorded in the Royal Commission's 1976 inventory).
Generally the fort is thought to originally date from the early Iron Age, with the single bank and ditch being doubled in the last couple of centuries BCE.
Huddlestone's Table (information from "Cleeve Hill: The History of the Common and its People" - David H. Aldred 1990 [Alan Sutton Publishing Limited]):
Traditionally the stone is said to mark the spot where King Kenulf of Mercia took leave of various important guests after the 811 dedication of Winchcombe Abbey. In 1779 an article about the stone appeared in "Gentlemen's Magazine" linking it in true antiquarian style with Druids and so on.
Visited in thick fog on 22.12.2008. The ramparts (double bank and ditch) are fairly well preserved and now enclose c. 3 acres along the edge of the escarpment. Quarrying has destroyed much of the western/south-western side of the fort (although it has emphasised the sheer drop away from the fort on that side). There are spectactular views towards the Malverns on a non-foggy day.
Taking a path over the edge and down the west, you come across the enigmatic stone block known as "Huddlestone's Table" (see Folklore for more on this).
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