Images

Image of Hamdon Hill (Hillfort) by formicaant

The hillfort from the valley below, the stone pillar is a war memorial.

Image credit: Mike Rowland 02/03/10
Image of Hamdon Hill (Hillfort) by mrcrusty

06/03/2008
Ham Hill Hill Fort
Looking North

Image credit: Rob Frost
Image of Hamdon Hill (Hillfort) by formicaant

Some of the many lumps and bumps in the interior of the site, most of which are spoil heaps from quarrying.

Image credit: Mike Rowland 31/05/2007.
Image of Hamdon Hill (Hillfort) by formicaant

The inner east bank is on the left in this photo.

Image credit: Mike Rowland 31/05/2007.
Image of Hamdon Hill (Hillfort) by formicaant

A gap in the eastern rampart.

Image credit: Mike Rowland 31/05/2007.
Image of Hamdon Hill (Hillfort) by formicaant

The outer ditch and bank at the north east corner.

Image credit: Mike Rowland 31/05/2007.
Image of Hamdon Hill (Hillfort) by formicaant

Looking down into the ditch at the north east corner.

Image credit: Mike Rowland 31/05/2007.
Image of Hamdon Hill (Hillfort) by formicaant

The top of the inner northern bank.

Image credit: Mike Rowland 31/05/2007.
Image of Hamdon Hill (Hillfort) by formicaant

The slope of the north rampart, the trees are where the outer bank is.

Image credit: Mike Rowland 31/05/2007.
Image of Hamdon Hill (Hillfort) by formicaant

Spoil heaps from quarrying.

Image credit: Mike Rowland 31/05/2007.
Image of Hamdon Hill (Hillfort) by formicaant

A gap in the north bank looking west.

Image credit: Mike Rowland 31/05/2007.
Image of Hamdon Hill (Hillfort) by formicaant

A very non megalithic stone circle, only included here to show the type and size of the stone still quarryed from this site.

Image credit: Mike Rowland 31/05/2007.
Image of Hamdon Hill (Hillfort) by formicaant

This is at the entance to the site.

Image credit: Mike Rowland 31/05/2007.

Articles

Ham Hill fort dig reveals 2,500-year-old human remains

Human remains more than 2,500 years old have been found in the UK’s largest Iron Age hill fort in Somerset.

Archaeologists from Cardiff and Cambridge universities began excavating Ham Hill two years ago when a trial dig revealed an Iron Age skeleton.

The latest remains have been found near the edge of the hill fort, revealing signs of violent conflict.

And other bones and skulls found in the interior section mainly belonged to young women in their 20s.


The project is in its third and final year and the excavation is due to finish in mid-September.

The dig area is in the centre of the hill fort, also known as the enclosure, and two trenches around the perimeter where there are earthen ramparts [defences].

Dr Marcus Brittain, from the Cambridge Archaeological Unit, said of the centre of the hill fort: “There’s an enormous amount of bodies starting to emerge, many of which are young ladies in their 20s.

“There’s a lot of human heads as well which is rather unusual – there are five so far.

“We’re starting to think these bodies are associated with funerary practice but also at a particular time in the hill fort’s history when conflict was rife.

“It was gruesome to imagine that people would have had daily, probably unavoidable contact with the remains of the dead – quite possibly of friends and family members.”

The remains were excavated from grain pits but are not thought to be complete skeletons.

Other remains were found near the ramparts.

The ramparts date back to about 1,000BC, but archaeologists have dug back to the layer which equates to 100BC, when the Romans first started invading Britain.

“The human remains which we are starting to find, they’ve got cut marks.

“They’re very fine cut marks but it is potentially illustrating that there has been some unpleasant and violent conflict in that transitional period between the inhabitants and perhaps the incoming Romans,” Dr Brittain said.

They have also found metal arrowheads and body armour dating back to Roman times.

Once the dig is complete, the human remains will be taken to the Cambridge Archaeological Unit for further research.

An open day for the site is planned for 7 September

bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-somerset-23928612

Also of course Past Horizons.....

pasthorizonspr.com/index.php/archives/09/2013/excavations-underway-at-the-largest-hillfort-in-britain

Iron age hill fort excavation reveals 'possible suburbia'

The most intensive investigation ever undertaken of Britain’s largest iron age hill fort is expected to reveal new details of how Britons lived 2,000 years ago – and maybe even that they were almost as suburban as we are.

Stretching across 80 hilltop hectares, behind three miles of ramparts, the fort, at Ham Hill in Somerset, and the outline of its history have been known for many years.

The Durotriges tribe, which lived on the hill, was subdued in AD45 by soldiers of the 2nd Legion under the command of the future emperor Vespasian, but what the Romans found there: a street system lined with houses on their own plots of land, is what archaeologists from Cambridge and Cardiff universities hope to uncover more fully in excavations over the next three summers.

“There was a main road going through and regular enclosures with round houses in them – it looks rather like suburbia,” said Christopher Evans, director of the Cambridge Archaeological Unit. “We are not going to find Conan Doyle’s Lost World up on the plateau.”

As the ramparts were much too extensive for the occupants of the hill to defend on their own, attention is turning to whether the people who lived there were actually developing a community or collective identity for themselves. Although there have been bronze age finds from an earlier era, it is still not known when the hill was occupied and the ramparts built.

Niall Sharples from Cardiff university’s school of history, archaeology and religion said: “It is a bit of an enigma. Ham Hill is so big that no archaeologist has ever really been able to get a handle on it. As a result there has never been a thorough campaign of excavations and nobody knows how the settlement was organised inside.

“People think of these places as defensive structures, but it is inconceivable that such a place could have been defended. Thousands of people would have been required: militarily it would have been a nightmare. Clearly it was a special place for people in the iron age: but when did it become special, why and how long did it stay that way?”

The initial dig this summer has uncovered human remains, including one full skeleton and the bones of a dog, as well as artefacts from domestic life including tools and pottery. The inhabitants had paddocks for animals and grain storage pits.

The excavation, which is focusing on a one hectare area, will take place under the eyes of walkers and visitors to a country park which now covers the hill, just west of Yeovil.

There is an open day with tours this Saturday between 11 am and 4pm, and information boards at the site and eventually iPod talks will allow people to follow the progress of the dig.

The excavation is being funded by a local quarrying company which wants to open up part of the hill so that it can continue to provide the distinctive local hamstone which has been used for building in the area since Roman times.

guardian.co.uk/science/2011/sep/01/iron-age-hill-fort-excavation

Note; The excavation is because of renewed quarrying.......

Hamdon Hill

This is a massive and quite confusing site. The outer ramparts are three miles in length and enclose an area of 210 acres. The confusion is in large part to do with the amount of quarrying that is and has taken place on this site. What look like banks are spoil heaps, only once you get to the outer edge of the hilfort does it become more clear what is going on.
It commands a hilltop with 360 degree views of the surrounding country. The easiest part to walk around is the northern end, where there is a large war memorial. This is a mainly bivallate hillfort, with a third bank and ditch at some lower points in the perimeter.
Within the interior is a modern stone circle, which I have included to show the stone which is still being quarried from this site. Most of the surrounding villages are built of this redddish stone.

Folklore

Hamdon Hill
Hillfort

A curious superstition (says a Somersetshire correspondent) has come to light in Mid-Somerset. It seems that the labouring classes in that locality, like those of most other rural districts in England, hold or held sacred certain supposed prophecies of “Mother Shipton,” whose topographical knowledge, if we are to believe all that is said of her, must have been little less marvellous than her insight into the future.

Of these prophecies the most widely believed in had reference to the fate of Ham Hill, a large stone quarry in the neighbourhood of Yeovil, and a prominent feature of the landscape for miles around. It was to the effect that at twelve o’clock on the Good Friday of 1879 Ham Hill should suddenly be swallowed up by an earthquake, and that at the same time Yeovil should be visited by a tremendous flood. With such real anxiety was last Friday looked forward to, in consequence, that people actually left the locality with their families and went to stay with their friends in other parts of the county until the dreaded “visitation” should be over; others, whose faith was less robust, nevertheless thought it advisable to remove their pots and pans from the shelves of their cupboards and to stow away their clocks and looking-glasses in places where they were not likely to be shattered by the shock of the earthquake; others, again, suspended gardening operations for a day or two, thinking it mere waste to commit good seed to the earth that was likely to behave so treacherously.

On the morning of Good Friday itself large numbers of people – many of them from a distance – flocked to the spot, or as near to the spot as they dared venture, to await, half incredulous and half in terror, the stroke of twelve and the fulfilment of the prophecy. When, however, the appointed hour had passed, and Ham Hill still stood unabashed, they began to look sheepishly into each other’s faces and to move away. At present in Mid-Somerset Mother Shipton and her prophecies are somewhat “at a discount.”

Those crazy provincials. From the Pall Mall Gazette for April 14th, 1879.

Folklore

Hamdon Hill
Hillfort

The Somerset HER website describes this as possibly the biggest hillfort in the country! covering the whole top of the hill. And there are finds from Mesolithic to R*man times. So you’d think there’d be room for a few ghosts.

Hamdon Hill is, as some might say, ‘seriously haunted’, with descriptions of ‘bizarre shapes outlined by light’ to those of Roman soldiers walking the hilly ramparts.

... G F Munford [one time editor of the Western Gazette] was an avid collector of supernatural tales ... one of his favourites concerned a local witch whose spirit is still said to haunt the district.

Another startling story tells of ... David G., a retired postal worker [who] was visiting friends in the nearby hamlet of Hamdon Hill. It was a humid afternoon in the summer of 1957 and his first excursion to Somerset. He was driving along the boundary of the hill ...

“There wasn’t another car in sight, and although it was broad daylight I couldn’t help feel that something wasn’t right. I was also feeling tired, but not sleepy. There were lots of people walking towards me. Bit of a surprise. I stopped and turned off the engine. The shock of it was that these people were dressed in armoured uniforms. They looked the spitting image of Roman soldiers, bit like the ones I had seen in ‘The Robe’, which was showing that year in town [at the cinema]. I really thought a film was being shot, until they just kept coming on and walked right through the car and me. Everything turned very cold. Believe me, it took a long time to get started. I arrived to my friends safe and sound. Never said a word, until you brought up the subject of ghosts.”

Mr G. allegedly asked his friend not to share the story with anyone until after his death (which the book says was the year after his experience).
From ‘Haunted Somerset’ by John Garland (2007).



I so want the nearby knoll of ‘St Michael’s Hill’ (known as Lodegarsburgh in Saxon times) to have prehistoric significance. But if there ever were traces they’ve been destroyed by the overlaying layers of Norman castle. It’s got interesting (and madly complicated) stoney folklore, according to Alan Holt’s ‘Folklore of Somerset’ (1992). A blacksmith dreamed that Jesus told him to dig on the top of the hill. He had to dream it three times before he was convinced. In the hole he found a ‘great stone which miraculously split in two, and in the cleft they saw a great crucifix of glistening black flint. Beneath it was a smaller one, an old bell and an old book.’ Then the Dane Tofig stuck the cross on the back of a cart, drawn by 12 red oxen. The oxen didn’t want to go anywhere except Waltham, where Tofig built his Abbey. He displayed the crucifix and when King Harold turned up it bowed to him.

Giant stones? Flint? Blacksmiths? Red oxen? Crucifixes? Mental.

Folklore

Hamdon Hill
Hillfort

A writer on Somerset superstition in Cassell’s Family Magazine for November, 1890, says: “The prophecies of Mother Shipton are nowhere more widely believed in than in the county of Somerset. Not long ago a report was in circulation that a great catastrophe had been predicted by this old sage. She had prophesied that Ham Hill, one of the great stone quarries of Somerset, would be swallowed up on Good Friday. This catastrophe was to be the consequence of a tremendous earthquake, which would be felt all over the county. Some of the inhabitants left the neighbourhood to escape the impending evil; others removed their crockery and breakable possessions to prevent their being thrown to the ground; others, again, ceased cultivating their gardens. Great alarm was felt, and Good Friday was looked forward to with universal anxiety. And yet when the day came and went without any disaster at all, even that did little to dispel the faith in Mother Shipton; the calculator had made a blunder about the date, and it was not her fault; and many Somersetshire folk are still waiting, expecting to suffer from the prophesied catastrophe.

The Folk-Lore of Somerset
Edward Vivian; F. W. Mathews
Folklore, Vol. 31, No. 3. (Sep. 30, 1920), pp. 239-249.

Folklore

Hamdon Hill
Hillfort

Ham Hill has a feature called the ‘Frying Pan’ which was thought to have been a Roman amphitheatre at one time – but it’s really a bit small. According to an informant from Stoke under Ham in 1908, every girl or woman who visits must sit down and slide from top to bottom of the bowl – ‘it’s lucky’. Ruth Tongue adds: “Surely here is a relic of pagan rites such as those embodied in the game of Trundles and others.” Well, maybe and maybe not. And what is this game of Trundles anyway? The word must come from OE trendle = a circle; there are other round Trundles you can visit at ancient sites.

from ‘Somerset Folklore’ by Ruth Tongue, 1965.

Folklore

Hamdon Hill
Hillfort

An underground passage at least a mile long is said to lead from Montacute House to Ham Hill. Ham Hill is the site of a huge 210-acre hillfort, one of the largest in Britain. Although it is now much damaged by quarrying there are apparently still some very impressive ramparts to be seen.

Miscellaneous

Hamdon Hill
Hillfort

Details of hillfort on Pastscape

[ST 483164] Hillfort [GT] (1)
A multivallate Iron Age hillfort on Hamdon Hill more generally known as Ham Hill, encloses an area of 210 acres and has a 3 mile perimeter. Due to extensive quarrying of the Ham stone since Roman times the entrances are difficult to determine, but a turning in of the banks at the north-west and south-east of the fort, probably indicate them. Numerous finds, most of which have come from the over-burden during quarrying operations, and also from excavations in the north-western sector by H. St. George Gray in 1923-5 and 1929 testify to occupation of the area at least from Neolithic times. The most intensive occupation of the hill-fort appears to have been in the 1st cent. B.C. and during the first 60-70 years A.D. This is attested by numerous finds including a late – probably Belgic – pit burial; pottery sherds of Halstatt form (IA ‘A’); bowls of Glastonbury type (IA, ‘B’ or ‘AB’); bead-rim vessels and other forms of south-western type dating towards the time of the Claudian conquest; a bronze bulls-head of Celtic type (possibly an ornamental chariot fitting); chariot horn caps; iron tyres of wheels; bridle-bits and nosebands. Iron currency bars have been found, also silvered bronze coins of the Durotriges. In 1930 excavations revealed a closely grouped area of dwelling and storage pits of pre-Roman date. There is also considerable evidence of further occupation of Hamdon Hill during the Roman period, including a villa situated in the east part of the fort (ST 41 NE 8). Miscellaneous finds include a Saxon shield boss of iron, and a 14th cent. jug spout and bronze spur. The majority of the finds are in Taunton Museum, primarily in the Walter and Norris collections. (2-4)
Ham Hill is a bivallate contour following hillfort but in the S.W. corner it becomes trivallate. It is well preserved on all but the W. side where random quarrying makes it difficult to identify the ramparts. Two entrances can be positively identified; in the S.E. corner and on the E. side of the northern spur. Published survey (1/2500) revised. (5)
No change; survey of 10.1.67 correct. (6) Traces of an Iron Age settlement have been identified within the northern spur of the hillfort by Gray’s excavations during the 1920s (7-9) and from artefacts recovered over a period of time during quarrying and a watching brief (10). It was originally thought that only the northern spur was occupied, and was separately fortified from the rest of the hillfort which was used as a cattle pound. Excavations carried out in 1983, identified pits containing daub, grain and probable second century BC pottery within the southwestern area of the hillfort. These excavations have shown that parts of the interior were devoid of structures, and that there was settlement beyond the area of the northern spur. (10-13) Burials have been identified on Ham Hill (ST 41 NE 70) including one with weapons and chariot fittings (ST 41 NE 71). Iron currency bars have also been recovered (ST 41 NE 72). For details of Neolithic, Bronze Age and Roman occupation see child records. (compiler – J Lancley) ST483164. Ham Hill consists of a plateau of shelly limestone with a spur projecting from its north-western corner. The sides of the plateau and spur are steep and their upper edges are followed closely by the hillfort defences. The defences at the northern and southern edges of the plateau have marked angles in their courses where major geological faults are encountered and negotiated. The total length of the inner circuit of the defences is 4.9km.
The form and number of defensive elements is fairly uniform throughout. The upper part of the hillside has been scarped to produce a steep inner rampart face. Generally the top of the inner rampart lacks a bank, or at least one of any significance, the major exception being the north-western spur where a prominent bank is present on the northern and eastern sides. The foot of the inner rampart is followed by a ditch which in places, especially where the natural slope is very steep, becomes a ledge or terrace. Beyond the ditch there is a second rampart represented by a bank. Where there is a terrace instead of a ditch the outer bank is replaced by a steep, outward facing scarp. Exceptions to this general pattern occur on the western side of the plateau and near the north-eastern corner of the spur. In these areas the defences are strengthened by an additional line of earthworks which comprise a ditch or ledge at the base of the second rampart beyond which is a third rampart consisting of either a bank or a steep, outward facing scarp.
The defences are broken by a number of entrances most of which are not original features; it is possible that the gap through the eastern defences on the north-western spur was created by the Roman army. There appear to have been two early entrances, one on the south-east near Batemoor Barn and the other at the head of the combe separating the spur from the plateau on the north-west – this last probable entrance has been totally destroyed by quarrying.
Geophysical survey of the interior has shown that the plateau area was extensively used in the past. Evidence for trackways, enclosures, fields, ring ditches, pits and areas of intensive occupation and industrial activity has been found (for reports see General Archive Materials below – UID/s 1005361, 1005362 and 1058425). Some of the fields are also visible as cropmarks on air photographs. A number of these sites appear to be related to the Roman villa whose principal range of buildings has also been revealed by geophysical survey in the eastern part of the hillfort. On the north-western spur a circlar depression and rectangular enclosure may relate to the use of this part of the hill for a fair during the medieval and post medieval period. South of these sites are the remains of four possible prehistoric round houses. The principal sites within the interior have been given individual NMR numbers and separately described (14). (15)

Sites within 20km of Hamdon Hill