Walking around the bottom of Oliver’s Castle today – these amazing hill formations.
Image credit: tjj
location_on
photo
ondemand_video
forum
description
link
If they are natural and were there in prehistoric times you can imagine the locals associating them with a sleeping dragon or other mystic beast! Perhaps Silbury was intended to be a copy, and they ran out of steam... ;-)
Thanks for your comment Angie, which I like a lot .. I would have thought Picked Hill might be a more likely candidate for imitation - I didn't make the connection when I posted the photo of Silbury next to the hills. I'm not even sure if these hills have a name - they don't appear to on the OS map.
Nearby King's Play Hill has similar formations and also Calstone Down (I haven't been to the latter but you can see them from Oldbury) - well worth a visit. I think they're great and they totally deserve some mythical explanation. Still, the geographers' one of long-lost water is bizarre enough really.
I bet it was nippy up on Oliver's Castle?!
Thanks Rhiannon, quite mild and still yesterday. I was actually on a mission to find Mother Anthony's Well which is tucked away in a field below Oliver's Castle at end of a small wild wood copse. I found it, admittedly with the help of a clever map-reading friend; we came on it almost by accident at the end of the wood - golden leaves floating in small pool which fell into a chalk-water stream. It really was a magic moment because the mist lifted, the sun came out and the landscape suddenly felt incredibly ancient.