|
 Log in |
Register
|
|
|
WinkelburyHillfort
|
Show map (inline Google Map)
|
|
|
Images (click to view fullsize) |
 Add an image |
|
Folklore |
Add folklore |
Berwick St John, Winkelbury Hill: golden coffin said to be buried on this hill where there are several barrows. (Landlord of the Talbot Inn to L.V.G., 1951).Barrow Treasure, in Fact, Tradition, and Legislation L. V. Grinsell Folklore, Vol. 78, No. 1. (Spring, 1967), pp. 1-38. |
Posted by Rhiannon21st March 2007ce |
Another version of the folklore:OLD THORN-TREES (clxxxvi. 106, 129). In the parish of Berwick-St.-John, there was an old encampment with a tumulus in the centre and on this tumulus there used to be an old thorn scrag, which was cut down by the then owner and used as firewood.From Notes and Queries 186 (7): 166. (1944). Online at http://nq.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/186/7/166-c.pdf |
Posted by Rhiannon 14th August 2006ce Edited 14th August 2006ce |
|
Kathleen Wiltshire's story below apparently harks back to when General Pitt Rivers excavated a round barrow here. Winkelbury was his first full season of serious, well-recorded excavations of enclosures and settlement sites, in winter 1881-2. He removed a dead yew tree, known locally as a 'scrag' from the round barrow. 'The villagers were troubled by his disturbance of the dead and removal of the ancient tree which they believed protected them from malign influences; they were only placated when another dead yew was 'planted' with all due ceremony some time later.' From Martin Green's book 'A landscape revealed - 10,000 years on a chalkland farm' (2000). Yews and hawthorn obviously figure prominently in people's lists of important trees. The idea of a dead tree being protective seems quite strange? but maybe it's not uncommon. It reminded me of the anecdote connected with Big Tree longbarrow in Somerset. |
Posted by Rhiannon 18th August 2005ce Edited 18th August 2005ce |
|
If you march round Winkelbury Hill seven times, cursing all the time, the devil will appear on a white horse, and grant you a wish. Kathleen Wiltshire heard this from a Michael Wheeler, who went to school in Salisbury in the 1940s. It's printed in her 'More Ghosts and Legends of the Wiltshire Countryside'. I don't know if he'd tried it. Your success would be limited by how polite you are I suppose. The Bords, in 'Secret Country', connect Winkelbury with tales of a hidden golden coffin. |
Posted by Rhiannon 28th October 2003ce Edited 26th April 2005ce |
|
Kathleen Wiltshire, in her 'Ghosts and Legends of the Wiltshire Countryside', mentions an infamous thorn bush which was - and is? - to be found on the top of Winkelbury. "It was planted some years ago to mark the situation of an earlier thorn known as the Witches' Scrag Tree. Witches were said to have become entangled in its thorny branches as they rode low over the hill on their broomsticks. It is said that at the time of the full moon a spate of them would litter the hill with their corpses - thus preserving the village folk from their nefarious attentions." |
Posted by Rhiannon 24th October 2003ce |
Miscellaneous |
Add miscellaneous |
| Pitt-Rivers excavated the site in 1881/2 and deduced that the fort was developed in the early Iron Age (and added to later). The fort cuts off a promontory in true defensive style, but elsewhere on the hill there are a number of round barrows, surely of an earlier date. The NMR does not yet list any details on the site. |
Posted by Rhiannon 24th October 2003ce |
Top of page