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Image Credit: Environment Agency copyright and/or database right 2015.

Image credit: Open Source Environment Agency LIDAR

juamei Mar 25, 2018

Articles

The Burgs

Hillfort

CARL Aug 1, 2011

‘Visited’ 30.7.11
A relaxing day out with the children in sunny Shropshire, visiting a couple of EH sites while giving Karen the chance for a quiet day at home. Well, that was the plan!
The traffic was busy all the way up through the Marches but around Bayston Hill it was horrendous due to road works. We sat in a hot car for what seemed like ages as we inched our way towards the site. At this point Sophie awoke and wanted her bottle! Unfortunately I couldn’t do anything as I was stuck in traffic with nowhere to pull over.
Then disaster – I missed the turn off and had to crawl all the way to the main A49/A5 junction and come back up the road – which was equally busy the other way.
Sophie was not impressed! As any parent will tell you, there is nothing more frustrating or distracting than a screaming child in the back of a car!
Eventually I turned into a cul-de-sac which I thought would give me access to the site – wrong! The whole area was surrounded by houses so no access although it did give me chance to feed Sophie.
I looked at the map again and realised the only other option was to take the road leading to a quarry. Unfortunately this meant going back into the road works. By now I was seriously thinking of giving it up as a bad job but knew I would later regret it if I did.
At last I found the right road and was immediately confronted with several warning signs stating ‘Private road – access to official quarry site traffic only – keep out’ – or words to that effect.
By now I had had enough and thought ‘sod it’ and drove down the road anyway.
Despite getting looks from a lorry driver coming the opposite was I found a field entrance I could squeeze the car next to.
Up to my right, on the brow of the hill, was the unmistakable sight of a single ditch / rampart. From this distance it looked to be pretty well preserved. By now I realised there was no chance of me getting any closer as firstly I didn’t feel comfortable leaving the car where it was, secondly there was a bull in the field and thirdly both children had now fallen asleep!!
All things considered I was grateful to have at least a view of part of the Hillfort.
If visiting this site I would suggest finding somewhere to park on the main road and walking the rest of the way.
Access to the Hillfort looked easy enough from the field although there is no official public right of way to the site.

The Burgs

Hillfort

Rhiannon Jan 14, 2025

I found this article while looking for fort-related folklore, and it made my blood feel a bit fizzy so I thought I’d share. Fortunately the Powers That Be protected the site – Mr Adkins literally couldn’t give less of a monkeys about it. Presumably he also owned Bomere Pool (scene of much folklore including a sword-wearing fish... maybe the reason why this place doesn’t need any). Not that he’d be remotely interested in that either.

No interest in hill fort site, farmer says.
A pre-Roman conquest hill fort, scheduled as an ancient monument, would be substantially destroyed by a farmer’s plan to build about 30 expensive houses on the site, it was said at a Ministry of Housing and Local Government inquiry at Shrewsbury yesterday.
But the farmer, Mr John Ivor Adkins, of Bomere Farm, Bayston Hill, near Shrewsbury, said that in the ten years he had been farming there, not one person has displayed an archaeological interest in the hill fort site on his land. “There is not even a notice indicating its existence,” he said.
Mr Adkin was appealing against the refusal of Shrewsbury County Council to allow him to develop a seven-acre site on his 200-acre farm for house building. The county council’s reasons for refusal were that the site was remote from the main village of Bayston Hill and was outside the area appropriate for development; an unclassified road which would serve the proposed development would create a traffic hazard at its junction with the A49; and the development site was an Iron Age hill fort dating from 300BC – AD 30, and scheduled as an ancient monument of national importance.
Mr Stephen Brown, Q.C., for Mr Adkins, said the site was on poor agricultural land and there was no objection to the building proposals by the Ministry of Agriculture. Dr Michael Thompson, inspector of ancient monuments in the Ministry of Public Buildings and Works, said the proposed development would leave only a third of the hill fort site unmolested. Cross-examined by Mr Brown, Dr Thompson agreed it might be possible to excavate the site at the developers’ expense when building operations were being carried out. But his Ministry’s main object was to preserve the fort as a memorial rather than as a site for archeological and scientific investigation.
The inquiry was closed.

In the Birmingham Daily Post, 4th May 1966.