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Hillfort
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Clambering up on to the flat, plateau–like top of the fort, we were treated to the most amazing view across Oxfordshire, and what was clearly a very important Iron Age kingdom. To the south-west lay Churn Knob, easily picked out from the copses on the horizon by the bloody great cross erected next to the mound. (Blasted St. Birinus; but it does make a handy reference point – OK, I deserve a smack with a riding crop). Beyond Churn Knob lay the Blewbury Downs Tumuli, almost equidistant between Blewburton Hill and Perborough Castle. The same tribe, maybe, or a shared burial ground?
Looking round to the west, the land spread before us magnificently, leading out to the Vale of White Horse; then we were subjected to the unfortunate and grotesque Didcot Power Station, squatting like a homunculus on this realm; and in the north, Oxford. Further round, clearly and unmistakably, the twin copses of Wittenham Clumps and the Sinodun Hills rose up proudly from the flat fields. A kilometer from them stood the lonely tree on Brightwell Barrow. Looking north-east, we could see what I thought was Stokenchurch Tower, poking up from the edge of the Chilterns. Cloudhigh wondered if he could see Ivinghoe Beacon on the horizon.
And somehow, it suddenly all added up for me, this landscape. The different places flowed together across the land in one continuous line; a line the ancients knew; a line that continues throughout time, just as powerfully on a Sunday afternoon in the second millennium CE as in the first millennium BCE. Blimey, that’s 3,000 years!!!
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Posted by treaclechops
5th September 2003ce
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