Sandy Lodge Promontory Fort

Hillfort

Rhiannon Dec 29, 2006

The Sandy Lodge fort would have been first occupied in the very early Iron Age (according to information on the ‘Magic’ schedule). It probably just had a wooden palisade rather than a more hefty earthen bank and ditch. Now the area has been disturbed by quarrying in places, but as the fort used a natural promontory, it might not be too difficult to work out where it might have been . It would only have been 150m from the Galley Hill fort, but this was probably used later? It’s a nice place to visit (nature trails go through this area – it is part of the RSPB headquarters)and you can get a feel for the view its inhabitants would have had, out over the flat countryside below.

I found this article in the Biggleswade Chronicle (11th July 1969):

Students excavate Middle Stone Age site at Sandy.
A spur of land at The Lodge, Sandy, headquarters of The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, was the scene last week of an archaeological excavation by 20 students from Putteridge Bury College of Education, Luton. The excavation, or ‘dig’, was led by Mr James Dyer, a lecturer at the college and editor of The Bedfordshire Magazine.
Mr Dyer explained that the site, a sandy spur overlooking the Ivel valley at Sandy, was first occupied extensively by Middle Stone Age people about 8,000 BC. These people lived by fishing in the Ivel and hunting animals and game in the pine forests on the greensand ridge. Excavation carried out last year and last week produced many tiny flint implements which formed the tips to arrows and spears. The settlement area of these people was extensive, and probably stretched as far north as the present site of the TV mast on Sandy Heath.
Mr Dyer said during the Iron Age period, a farmstead was constructed on the hill-top, and pottery and more flints found by himself and the students revealed the date of occupation as about 300 BC. He went on: “For some unknown reason it was considered necessary to defend the hill-spur and a great bank of sand was thrown up, 10 feet high and 30 feet wide, held in position by a dry stone wall on the outside, and a ramp of turf on the inside. Material to build the bank came from a great irregular ditch dug into the sandstone, which measured some 40 feet wide and eight feet deep in places. The defended farmstead was entered along a rock causeway, which had a stout wooden gate at one end.”
It is thought the farm was probably superseded as a defensive position by the hill fort known as Galley Hill, on the adjoining hill-spur. Both are in view from the Roman fort on Biggleswade Common, which was excavated about 14 years ago. A third Iron Age defensive work, misnamed Caesar’s Camp, overlooks the railway station at Sandy. all of which indicate a rather restless population in the area prior to the Roman conquest.