New online atlas of UK and Ireland hillforts | Forum

thesweetcheat Jun 22, 2017 07:33:24

"For the first time, a detailed online atlas has drawn together the locations and particulars of the UK and Ireland’s hill forts and come to the conclusion that there are more than 4,000 of them, mostly dating from the iron age.

The project has been long and not without challenges. Scores of researchers – experts and volunteer hill fort hunters – have spent five years pinpointing the sites and collating information on them.

Their task has been made more complicated by the term “hill fort”. Many of the sites that make it on to the atlas, which goes live on Thursday, are not on hills and are not really forts."

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jun/22/hillforts-uk-ireland-mapped-first-time-online-database-atlas?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Evergreen Dazed Jun 22, 2017 17:17:52

Replying to thesweetcheat

I don't wish to cause embarrassment, but worth pointing out that some here were against this project when it was just starting up and being discussed on this forum a few years ago because it was perceived as having a 'Placard waving', 'David Cameron Big Society' nature. There was a feeling, from some quarters, that it was 'getting people to work for nothing'.

tjj Aug 7, 2017 20:20:24

Replying to thesweetcheat

A Guardian article by Hugh Thomson - who wrote The Green Road Into The Trees a few years back. Worth a read.

https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2017/aug/07/walking-ancient-hillforts-wiltshire-downs-england-atlas-of-hillforts?CMP=share_btn_fb

"They stand in a clear line along the Wiltshire Downs facing north: perhaps facing an enemy whose identity we do not know. In the bright sunshine of late spring, I could see the hillforts stretching away along the escarpment – Barbury, then Liddington, and finally Uffington, with its famous chalk white horse. They may have been begun in the bronze age, but reached their apogee in the iron age, in the first millennium BC ... "