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 Head To Head The Modern Antiquarian Midsummer Hill Forum | Start a topic | Search |
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| Having spent a very enjoyable Saturday at two nearby hillforts (Wapley Hill and Credenhill Camp) both of which had been afforested and now have been cleared, or at least partially so in the case of Credenhill, I have to say that the clearance should ultimately be of long term benefit to the site. The woodland on those two may be more recent than that on Midsummer Hill, but the woodland on there cannot be older than the Roman invasion either. Wapley in particular is an absolute joy of a site, and by keeping the woodland on the surrounding slopes there is a wildlife haven as well. There were numerous bird boxes on the trees and I came across a deer on the edge of the ramparts. This seems to me to be best of both worlds, keeping the archaeology intact and the wildlife environment protected. I like woodland a lot, but I like prehistoric sites too and on balance I would say that the damage caused to earthworks by tree roots is far more destructive than that caused by potential visitors. I know Midsummer Hill is fairly well-visited but even so. In respect of the "photo opportunity" angle, this touches on some of the points raised in the Climbing on Standing Stones thread. I'm not sure that there's any harm in someone taking a picture of their kids there, perhaps those kids will grow up to be the enthusiasts of the future and will take their kids in turn. It's through people's interest that these sites will thrive and survive, not by fencing them off and preventing any access, while the trees take over and erode the banks. I do find it a little ironic that this concern about people taking photos keeps coming up in recent threads, given that a very large proportion of the contributions to this website are photographs. Reply | with quote |  27th February 2012ce 11:46 In reply to: Scrub clearance on Scheduled monuments (moss) |
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