Secrets Of The Hillforts

Ancient earthworks steeped in mystery wind around the summits of many prominent British hills. Who built these strange structures, and why?

- Roly Smith

You can get a hair-raising feeling of closeness to the past as you stand on the airy ramparts of Mam Tor, the 2,000-year-old hillfort that dominates the head of the Hope Valley in the Peak District.

As you look east down the broad, tree-lined valley and north to the frowning heights of Kinder Scout, you are experiencing the same sense of dominance of the landscape as our ancestors who built the fort must have felt. This is especially true on a winter’s morning when mist fills the valleys and the earthworks are more sharply defined now the cloaking vegetation has died back.

Mam Tor is one of our most impressive hillforts, dating from the late Bronze to early Iron Age. Its embankments were built to abut onto the collapsed ‘shivering’ east face, thought to have formed part of the ancient defences.

Hillforts are little understood by most people, perhaps due to the militaristic name that the Victorians gave them. In fact, Mam Tor and many others seem to have been peaceful summer shielings, used by Celtic tribes to watch over their flocks. They would probably have been abandoned during winter months. But in others, such as Maiden Castle in Dorset and Danebury in Hampshire, there is evidence of an Asterixstyle resistance to the Roman invaders.

CASTLES IN THE AIR