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Hillfort
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The visitors [to Woldbury Camp] were soon engaged in examining its embankments, considering the water supply, and taking the height of the summit, where stood that now familiar object, an Ordnance Survey pole. The papers were to be read beneath the yew trees on the large south-western embankment, where "the British Chieftain was buried," said a resident on the spot. From 'Transactions of the Woolhope Naturalists' Field Club (1883-85).
In a fantastically patronising touch, the report finishes by listing all the gentlemen who attended, "with a sprinking of natives, who came to listen to the papers, and pick up a few crumbs of science, and who, it is believed, listened with much gratification to the many-syllabled words introduced on the occasion." I fear people with that kind of attitude are alive and well in 2011 and employed in the government :)
And not folklore, but certainly a weird occurrence, that in April 1793, there was a massive landslide (quoted from p48):
.. the ground sank fifty perpendicular feet, and then moved forward. It was witnessed by a labourer, who, when working near a hedge, found the ground moving, and at the same moment heard a loud noise resembling a distant hailstorm. Running from his work towards the river, across a narrow meadow, he observed with alarm the sloping hill, with trees on it, moving gradually towards him, and this progressive movement is said to have continued from Thursday to the next morning. It was a movement downwards and in its progress S.W. It has left immense caverns in the earth, and moved stones there of the magnitude of five or six tons. A number of trees were thrown down, some moved standing and are now remaining so. A large old yew tree was moved nearly sixty feet, and is now standing firm and uninjured. The people assert that six acres of ground were moved.
Yet another snippet from the same journal has it that a quarry on Capler Hill is the traditional source of the stone for Hereford cathedral.
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Posted by Rhiannon
23rd March 2011ce
Edited 23rd March 2011ce
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