Devil's Trackway | Forum — The Modern Antiquarian

Rhiannon Sep 9, 2005 10:55:06

http://www.themodernantiquarian.com/post/39896

Just wondering if anyone had noticed this before or knows anything about it.
(check out the photo at
http://viewfinder.english-heritage.org.uk/search/reference.asp?index=109&main_query=&theme=ANCIENT%20SITE&period=&county=&district=&place_name=&imageUID=76331

It's easy to think first off - oh that's just a track - but surely not, the way it's heading off down that steep slope.
Anything similar at other causewayed enclosures (or whatever they're called)?

juamei Sep 9, 2005 11:05:13

Replying to Rhiannon

Not causewayed enclosures, but immediately brings to mind the racks at Windover Hill, on here as a cursus. Also the weird bank barrow / track next to Pen Hill long barrow.

http://www.themodernantiquarian.com/site/3944 is the windover one.
http://www.themodernantiquarian.com/site/5696 is Pen Hill. I've been back to this 3 or 4 times now and I'm starting to come round to the opinion that this could be an errant Bank Barrow.

MJB Sep 9, 2005 11:35:09

Replying to Rhiannon

It is a trackway - or tramway if you like. It was used to haul carts up to fetch chalk from the post-medieval chalk and flint quarrying on the hill-top. See 'The Avebury Landscape: Aspects of the field archaeology of the Marlborough Downs' (2005), edited by Graham Brown, David Field and Dave McOmish (Oxbow), especially pages 5 (site plan) and 6; plus of course 'The Creation of Monuments: Neolithic Causewayed Enclosures in the British Isles' (2001) by Al Oswald et al, published by English Heritage.