Showing 1-20 of 70 miscellaneous posts. Most recent first | Next 20 
An Early Iron Age settlement site covering 1000 sq m
Excavated in the 1980's with usual pottery, bone and some flint finds.
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Aldbourne Four Barrows. - Sugar hill, Aldbourne near Hungerford.
Bronze age barrow cemetary 2500 - 1500 BC.
The contents of these Barrows are now in the British Museum. Three of the four barrows are of the Wessex bell type of barrow these are eight to ten feet high. The fourth is an ordinary bowl shaped mound, also ten feet high. They were excavated by W. Greenwell near the end of the 19th century. Two of the bell barrows contained cremations and the third a skeleton. Other finds included amber, beads, flint arrowheads, fragments of greenstone axe and a grooved dagger. The bowl barrow had a cremation in a burial cist covered with four sarsen stones. The famous Aldbourne barrow is at the foot of this hill in the field by the A419 just north of the wood. It is a bowl about 100 feet across by six feet high. The mound provided the British Museum with its Aldbourne cup, an incense cup with lid, and two bronze awls, a bronze dagger and beads of faience, amber, fossils and shale.
from:
http://www.wiltshire-web.co.uk/history/barrows.htm
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During 1981 and 1982 an area of the East ditch was dug. Radiocarbon dates from material from the lower levels of the ditch indicated a date of 2900BC.
Mesolithic remains were also found.
'E T Leeds investigated Neolithic, Bronze Age and Anglo-Saxon sites near the cursus on the second terrace, and the Abingdon Society has excavated a Neolithic henge and bronze age remains to the north of the Cursus.'
from 'Excavations on the Cursus at Drayton, Oxon'
R Ainslie & J Wallis, Oxoniensia LII
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Lowbury Hill: An artificial grove?
'Lowbury Hill in Oxfordshire, England, has long been regarded as the site of a probable Romano-British temple. The summit of the hill is occupied by several earthworks, including a rectangular enclosure and a round barrow. The site was excavated in 1913-14, when the bank and interior were investigated.
Further work has recently been carried out, including a geophysical survey and a limited excavation programme. One of the most interesting features discovered in this new investigation is the presence of a series of shallow, irregular scoops in the chalk, filled with dark, loamy soil, which have been interpreted as tree holes. These seem to have formed part of the primary demarcation of the sacred enclosure, and appear to represent deliberately planted trees.
This activity perhaps took place in the first century AD. The inference is that the first construction was replaced in the second century AD by an enclosing wall: inside there was probably a simple temple building; associated with it were a group of spears (including a deliberately bent one), coins and other finds indicative of sacred use.
But the first phase may have comprised a deliberately planted holy grove. One further discovery of possible relevance is the burial of a woman whose face had been mutilated, though it is uncertain to which phase this body belongs.'
Miranda J Green
1997
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Maidenhead Thicket, Robin Hood's Arbour.
'Mrs M A Cotton has directed excavations during the summer of 1960 on this sub-rectangular earthwork ...but Mrs Cotton obtained sections across the bank, ditch and counter-scarp bank. Outside and inside the entrance was found a cobbled trackway but no definite evidence for any timber structures. A hut or farmstead probably had existed in the enclosure and burnt down, for several isolated pieces of burnt daub were found to show that the enclosure had been constructed by the Belgae, probably between AD 25-50.'
source: Berkshire Archaeological Journal, Vol 58 1960
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'In 1947 a silver coin of the Dobunni, type of Mack 384a, was found at the hill fort of Uffington Castle...'
source: Berkshire Archaeological Journal Vol 58 (1960)
The Celtic tribe inhabiting the hill fort was Atrebates. Was this coin traded, or the spoils of war?
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Cashtal yn Ard in Manx-Gaelic means 'Castle of the Height'.
Source: The Folklore of the Isle of Man, by Margaret Killip.
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Tumuli
Gaunt trees, scant shelter
For the grass covered barrow
On wind caressed downland
Overlooking the vale
The ancient chalk highway
A stone's throw away
Lies vacant, brooding;
Acknowledges whispers, inaudible echoes
Vibrations from invisible feet
Weathered sarsen monoliths
Stand to attention
Lichen encrusted overseers
Of a strange uneasy place
The pulse quickens, reactive sensation
An incorporeal feeling;
The heart of past centuries
Although hidden, still beats.
David Pike
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Iron age settlement site. Pottery and a skeleton found in the 19th Century. (ref: Smith 1894, Victoria County History, Beds.)
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Iron age settlement site. Finds of pottery. (ref: Bradford 1942).
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'A small detached hillock, about midway between Tetsworth and Lewknor, some 1½ miles from the foot of the Chiltern escarpment' - (quote found somewhere on that there 'Tinternet')
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SP981221 Nearby settlement site at Totternhoe.
Storage pits and hearth. Finds included: high round shouldered jars and a bronze vase-headed pin. Iron age. (ref: Hawkes 1940)
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Pits cut into chalk, pottery finds with unique horseshoe decoration. Also, finds of bone, bronze and iron objects. (ref: Richardson & Young 1951)
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Settlement site with intercutting pits. Finds of pottery, bone and bronze ring-headed pin. (Head & Piggot 1946)
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Bozedown, Whitchurch: Univallate enclosure of 58 acres.
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Univallate enclosure of about 4 acres and Heavily ploughed.
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Thoughts of the Icknield Way
(downs of Berkshire)
When wild west winds sweep o'er these Downlands free
And sway ripe cornfields 'neath a changing sky
They lash to dancing ev'ry storm-tossed tree
And shout and sing of ages long gone by -
We walk the Ridge, as did those skin-clad men
Who chipped the flint and worshipped each new day,
The Sun, Deliverer from night's terrors then,
Ere Roman legions tramped that windy way.
Where now wave toadflax and the scabious blue,
Where Pasque flowers nestle, as the heights begin
Of rounded hills lit with a rainbow hue: -
Once ran the hares before the battle's din.
Time was, when as the startled larks took wing,
The blowing-stone went sounding far and near,
As Saxon warriors rallied round a King,
Who saved his land, yet held Christ's Faith more dear.
Men saw his valour on the Field of Fame,
His great forgiving of a captive foe,
To whom, baptised into Christ's saving Name,
Was granted freedom, and a new life to know.
Men knew his zeal for learning and for law,
Culture and music, love of kith and kin,
But God alone his nightly vigils saw: -
Those prayers in suff'ring that Heaven's strength could win.
Sister Sylvia
Wantage
notes:
'Field of Fame' = Ethandune
'captive foe' = Guthrum and the Danish Leaders
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'Madmarston Iron Age hill fort, occupied from 200BC to 50AD., was defended by three banks and a ditch, now much reduced by ploughing.'
'A History of Oxfordshire' by Mary Jessup
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Whitehouse is the site of the old Oxford City FC ground (Marlborough Road, Oxford). The club moved ground and the land has since been partially developed.
Aerial photography revealed a gravel site with Middle Iron Age (third to first century BC) settlement overlain by Medieval.
Source: 'Oxfordshire' by John Steane
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Ridgeway Pageant
All the hills are watching,
Awed and still:
Away below
Retreats the faint-heart Vale.
Above,
An angry, mighty sky
Rears high,
Piled all triumphant to the setting sun -
Lit mad in changing chaos:
Silver backed, then gilded.
Mottle-splashed with crimson...
Darkened depths, part broken,
Upward pierced
By shafts of sunlight questing -
Molten vistas glistening
And portals passioned low
In ranks of terraced fire.
They drift, they fade..
New forms take shape -
With opal half-light intermingle...
Glare reflects a lustre
On the pale, dry headland mass
Of White Horse Hill.
A strange, tense calm -
Impending dusk alight with radiance:
A wild serenity.
In slow, rough accent:
"That ther' brings some weather, sna..."
A shepherd stays his sheep
Before the blaze.
Roye England
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Showing 1-20 of 70 miscellaneous posts. Most recent first | Next 20 |
Live near the Ridgeway and most interested in sites 'up the rudge'.
Hates: people leaving rubbish at Wayland Smithy (groan, gripe, rant, rage, dribble etc!)
Loves: people taking their rubbish away with them in bags. And yes, that includes nitelites, coins (at least make them silver!), glass, sweet wrappers and dog ends.
Q. what's brown and sticky?
A. try collecting firewood at Waylands.
THINK. would you shit in a church?
... ... ... here endeth the rant
} cUrReNt NoNsEnSe {
Doesn't pagan to a roman just mean some old person who lives in the sticks?
"Why don't you knock it off with them negative waves? Why don't you dig how beautiful it is out here? Why don't you say something righteous and hopeful for a change?"
"God dammit Jim, I'm a Doctor not a Dealer"
"We have sat waiting like this many times before. Sometimes I tire... of the fighting and killing. At night, I can hear the call of my race. They wait for me. When I join them, we will be forgotten."
"We're dealing with a Gnome! A Devil!... A Devil? Now you listen to me. The Devil in the Keep wears a black uniform, has a Death's Head in his cap, and calls himself a Sturmbannführer!"
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