St George's Hill Hillfort View all content for St George's Hill

St George's Hill Fort – 7.8.2003 Thanks to info from the splendid Juamei I joined him and several other interested folks on a potted history and guided tour of St George's Hill Fort, organised by the very friendly people at Elmbridge Museum (Weybridge). I believe the next (free) trip is on 18th September so call 01932 843573 to put your name down. The staff gave a short talk about the fort and its history, and handed round a few archeological finds, plus a few maps, paintings, and pictures of the area. We then drove out to the St.Georges area, widely described as one of the most exclusive housing developments in the UK. It has security guards, and even a map of the roads and houses, rather like the classic Tube map of London. Anyway, stuff the houses, we came for the hillfort. There isn’t a great deal to see, but it was great to get the chance to see it, and to chat about it to the museum staff and the other people on the tour. Basically the council owns a semi-circular section of the rampart / ditch, which is all they can show us. The bank is about 6m tall, but the ditch has silted up, and only traces of a bank in front are visible. The remains of the ramparts are now heavily overgrown, and not easy look out from, but in a few places the steep incline off the main rampart / ditch is obvious. A number of investigations at St George's Hill have failed to discover evidence for regular occupation, while in contrast, testing of a small area at St Ann's Hill suggested it may have been intensively occupied throughout the Iron Age. The archeological finds we saw at the Museum were from the general area, but not the fort itself. PS - Laughable info from www.surreyproperty.com “St George's Hill to the south of the town is one of the most exclusive residential estates in the UK. With its origins as possibly a bronze age hill fort……” Umm, Bronze Age??

Posted by pure joy 13th August 2003ce

Comments (0)
You must be logged in to add a comment