There's something strange about this hillfort; it's not on a hill. See what we discovered when we tried to find out when it was built, and what it was for.
There are around 4,174 hillforts in the UK and Ireland. Having developed in the Late Bronze and Early Iron Age (from approximately 1,000 BC) and remained in used by the ancient Britons until the Roman conquest and sometimes beyond, they come in all shapes and sizes. Some are ovoid, some are rectilinear, some have single defensive banks and some have many. Some are interpreted as being defensive, some for settlement, some for storing grain and others for showing off. But if there’s one thing they all seem to have in common, it’s that they’re all on hilltops, right? Wrong.
There are in fact a surprising number of lowland hillforts in England, and Oldbury Camp is one of them.
This scheduled ancient monument now sits at the heart of Oldbury-on-Severn – a picturesque Gloucestershire village, but so far, there has been no full-blown attempt to figure out how old this unusual monument actually is.
When was it built? What was it for? And how does it relate to other more traditional hillforts in the area?
As part of the A Forgotten Landscape project, DigVentures lead a community excavation to find out more about it.
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