In the sixth century BC, after an interval which may have been short, a village was established on the site by a community with quite different traditions of housebuilding. Just inside the entrance stood a great round house, 15 m in diameter. It was a type whose successful construction attests the highest standards of carpentry and engineering attained in south Britain at the time, for the peak of its thatched conical roof stood eleven metres high or more, with no central support. It was accompanied by a number of smaller round houses. This village too was provided with four-post granaries. There is no reason to doubt that the community was broadly the same kind and size as its predecessor.
Substantial progress was made in rebuilding and strengthening the defences in the vulnerable eastern sector. The old wall, much of which had slaked to a powdery mortar-like aggregation, had already been patched with lengths of walling hastily built from the rubble of its destruction. Now it was covered and extended with new stonework, quarried from pits immediately behind it in the interior and from extensions of the old ditch outside it. The new defence was ambitious; perhaps 5 or 6m high, with a walkway along the top and another platform, whose purpose in defence is not clear, part way down the front. It may be structural, the result of an attempt to build a high wall Crickley on a broad, firm base, in order to make a visually impressive and bristling series of battlements towards the eastern approaches. The old entrance was protected by new features: a bastion on either side and a hook-work which compelled the visitor to turn his unshielded right side to the north bastion, and its guards, as he entered. The construction of a second, outer wall was begun.
[Photo: the largest round house. This reconstruction gives it the greatest practicable height; it may have been lower. Part of the roof is unthatched to show the construction J. Eltham]
The village was destroyed before the re-fortification could be finished. Was the work undertaken in response to a threat? Or was the attack intended to root out an over-mighty power before it became impregnable? It is unlikely that we shall ever know. The hill-fort at Leckhampton hill, 3 km away, may have been occupied at the same time as the second hillfort at Crickley, and it, too, was destroyed by burning.
The destruction of the second hillfort seems to have in place no later than 400 BC, and at present there is nothing to suggest that the hill was occupied again before the Roman conquest, although evidence of later Iron Age occupation may yet be found. There were burials of the late Iron Age less than 1 km away on Barrow Wake, including that containing the Birdlip mirror and other fine metalwork of the last decades before the Roman conquest, which can now be seen in
[Photo: the final Iron Age wall and illustration: the round house village, c 500BC R. Morgan]"
The photograph on the second page, showing the final Iron Age wall, also appears at page 118 of "Crickley Hill: The Hillforts Defences" (Dixon and the Crickley Hill Trust 1994): from the examination of the full-page photograph there I can identify Anna Collinge and Bernie Dawson silhouetted against the skyline, with, just below them, Paul Noakes, a woman I can't identify, Mike Taylor, and John Parry. Just out the right, throwing a shape, Dave Southwood.
The First Hill-fort c. 700 - 600 BC
At a time when the climate had deteriorated - it seems to have become very like our own - the hill was permanently occupied again in the 7th or 6th centuries BC. This was the time of the development of a full iron-using economy in
The newcomers built long timber houses, aligned upon a street running east west along the top of the saddle at the eastern part of the hill. Four-post structures, some of them at least for grain storage, lay in a ring outside the houses. The bridge was defended by a stone wall, reinforced with timber lacing, which ran right around the promontory enclosing 9 acres. The wall was most substantially built to the east, where attackers could approach across level ground, and an imposing appearance would have most effect. Here it may have reached 4m high, with the ditch outside it, from which the stone was quarried, adding to its effective height. A walkway along the top, with a bridge across the entrance, allow the defenders to keep watch, to parade their valour, and to cluster where they were most needed during an assault. Deposits of sling stones lay near to hand, useful for discouraging animal and human predators alike. Timber towers, arranged at intervals behind the rampart, seem to have provided viewing or fighting platforms for the slingers.
[Photograph: the largest longhouse. Part of the roof is unthatched to show the construction. There is a smoke hole in the gable. J Eltham]
[Illustration: The long house village, c 700 - 600 BC K. Hajichristou]
The village housed, perhaps, a hundred souls. We can imagine them a little more clearly than their Neolithic predecessors, because in later centuries Greek and Roman writers describe barbarian societies like theirs, which shared much with the literate Mediterranean world; a cart made in
We do not know what language they spoke. It is possible that it was already one of the Celtic family of languages, to which modern Welsh and Irish belong.
Like most hill-forts, Crickley lacks an internal water-supply. The spring line is 60 m below the settlement, and there is no evidence for well-digging or pond making on the site. The cattle will have been watered at springs outside, where also the human community will have done most of its washing and only a minimum of water needed to be carried up. The village could not have stood a siege; sieges are almost unknown in primitive warfare, which is centred about the raid and the short campaign, even when it is set reassuringly within a hereditary feud.
The new community farmed the surrounding land, probably in small squarish fields whose boundaries, obliterated by modern agriculture, we do not now know. Their animals and crops were fundamentally those of their Neolithic predecessors - wheat, barley, cattle, sheep, pigs - though in improved breeds and probably using improved methods.
It is likely that there were undefended Iron Age settlements nearby; they are not always easy to find. A sight of this kind in the lowland is suspected
The settlement was attacked, captured, then thoroughly and expertly destroyed. In a strong west winds the rear facing of its wall was torn down and brushwood piled against the expose structured to fire the reinforcing beams. So intense was the heat is that much of the limestone of the wall was turned to quicklime.
[Illustration: section through the final Iron Age defences: the core of burned and slaked limestone, with the remains of vertical timbers just visible, and the new wall, in two tiers, built over and in front of it]"
Crickley Hill lies on the edge of the Cotswolds, with magnificent views over the valley of the
Twenty years is a long time to spend on a single excavation, particularly when the site is hillfort of modest size. But the excavations at Crickley will soon enter their third decade, and seem likely to continue for some years yet. The site has proved to be remarkably rewarding, with a long and complex history: furthermore, no ploughing has damaged the deposits, so even ephemeral traces of past activity can be picked up in the soil.
The project was begun in 1969 with limited aims. We wanted to dig the entrance and part of the rampart of an Iron Age hillfort, and to dig a few trenches in the interior to try and assess when the fort was built, and whether it was built for permanent or temporary occupation. The wider aims were unrealistic, given the small scale of work at first, but by the end of the third season in 1971, we had answered most of the questions with which we had started: by then two superimposed hillfort entrances had been explored, and a system of phasing arrived at – a phasing sequence still in use on the site. The Iron Age defences were dated by pottery and metalwork, and soon by radiocarbon, too, to the period c. 700 to 450 BC. Within the banks, trial holes revealed occupation debris post holes, dense in places, of broadly the same two periods as the defences.
Our problems, however, were just beginning. Towards the centre of the hill, well within the Iron Age defences, lay a much eroded bank. Cuttings across this area revealed unmistakably Neolithic assemblages – flint tools and waste flakes in large numbers, and pottery akin to that from the Windmill Hill excavations. Below this earthwork layer completely separate Neolithic bank and ditch, and even at this early stage it was apparent that these two Neolithic banks had been subjected to a whole series of alterations and reconstructions.
The site was clearly sufficiently complex, and well enough preserved to warrant a more thorough examination than was possible in a series of individual cuttings. So in 1972 we began a programme of stripping, in a regular grid pattern across the top of the hill. Over the seasons since then we have excavated some 160 10 x 10 metre squares, an overall total of about 17,400 square metres.
At first we were concerned that our returns would diminish as we knew more about the site. Theory, after all, suggests that a site may satisfactorily be investigated by a limited, often small sample. This has not been our experience at all. Almost every season has produced something new (and has required the modification of our interpretations of other formerly-believed aspects of the site). Even minor details are proved to have an added significance when seen in the total context of our growing knowledge of Crickley.
Our earliest horizon is a causewayed-enclosure of two circuits of ditches, with at least nine entrances. In comparison with the majority of Neolithic interrupted ditch enclosures, that on Crickley is tiny, no more than two acres in size. Its history is complicated: the outer ring was built first; the larger, inner, ring was contemporary with the second phase of the outer ring. Both were subsequently abandoned and restored on at least two occasions, and in flimsier phase of reoccupation the inner ring alone was rebuilt. While the relative sequence is clear, the time-span of all this is still doubtful. Almost all our Neolithic assemblages fit into a single phase of Neolithic material culture. At the moment, we are proposing a date range from c. 3000 to c. 2600 hundred BC for these enclosures.
The final Neolithic enclosure, a single-ring affair with few causeways, was built after a period of abandonment. Its narrow entrances, strong fences (and the plentiful evidence from leaf arrowheads and widespread burning) indicate that it was intended for protection, and fell only after a serious assault (see CA 76, May 1981). After the results from Hambledon and Carn Brea, Neolithic defences in
During the final phase of the Neolithic enclosure a small plateau at the western end of the hill had been segregated from the rest of the site by complex series of fences (see photo opposite). It was approached by a narrow footpath, blocked by two gates, and at the further side of the tiny courtyard stood a small rectangular building, with a hearth in the opening front of it, and with low
These early phases of the site are fascinating, but very ticklish to interpret. The hillfort, in contrast may seem straightforward. The area of the occupation was more than twice that of the earlier enclosure, and the defence is tall, and military-seeming, with narrow in-turned gatepassage and timber-laced ramparts.
The settlement inside was of two periods. The first was the more unusual, for it contains several rows of rectangular buildings (see plan, p. 75). These have a very early date, possibly in the 7th century BC, and they remain virtually unique in hillforts in
At the moment we have no clear evidence of any further occupation of the site for nearly a thousand years. A change of use, however, came at the end of the Roman period. At the end of the fourth or in the fifth century AD two separate settlements were built on top of the ruined hillfort about 200 m apart. One was sited close behind the collapsed Iron Age ramparts, and consisted of rows of small slightly sunken huts. When we first explored them, we thought they were going to be platforms of Iron Age round huts, but they were dated by late Roman material (including a military belt buckle) and grass tempered wares.
Two hundred metres to the west, on the very tip of the promontory was another settlement, enclosed by a strong fence, and entered through a wide gate with a guard house. It contained a series of buildings, including a granary and at least one substantial framed house. This too was dated by late Roman material and grass tempered wares.
However there were considerable differences between them in layout and cleanliness; all the finds came from the rather dirty settlement behind the rampart, which we are thus identifying as a peasant village. The settlement on the end of the promontory was much cleaner (fewer fines), and we are thus identifying it as an enclosed high status site. Both presumably belonged to a sub-Roman British group, perhaps even the descendants of the occupants of one or other of the nearby Roman country houses. These settlements in common with almost all Crickley’s occupations over three millennia, seemed to have ended through an act of war, perhaps in the late fifth or sixth century.
The destruction of the Dark Age sites at present seems to have been the end of serious occupation on our hill. In the Middle Ages the top was used by grazing animals, and fragmentary hut on the side of the hillslope may have belonged to a shepherd. When the agricultural improvements of the 19th century came to the Cotswolds, Crickley was remote from the areas of arable farming around the villages, and so escaped that destruction by the plough that was so widespread in the region. Until the start of our excavations it remained little visited, a place where (in Ivor Gurney’s poem about the hill)
The orchis, trefoil, harebells nod all day, /High over
The Period 2 hollow way narrowed where it ran between Houses 1 and 2, and came no closer than 1.5m to the lines of posts. The traffic was presumably here being funnelled by a barrier, and it thus seems likely that the outer walls of the houses lay the beyond the lines of the post holes, which thus formed internal supports of the roof structure. Absence of post holes for such an outer wall creates no difficulties, for the problems, experimentally observed, during the course of our excavations, of cutting small post holes in the oolite might well induce even builders accustomed to earth-fast posts to rely on walling framed on sleeper beams. In House 5 two post holes in this outer position can be seen as additional evidence for a framed exterior wall: House 5 had no other postholes in this position and the two outer holes perhaps supported a special structure -- the largest house having the most imposing facade. Between House 1 and House 3 a small square structure with a central posthole, perhaps to support a raised floor, projected beyond the lines of postholes into the roadway. As can be seen in figure 6, however, the proposed outer walls of Houses 1 and 3 aligned with the south wall of this square structure, which thus continued the line of the street frontage.
Suggested reconstructions of the longhouses are shown in figure 7. The simplest method would probably have been to fit horizontal timbers (aisle plates) between the aisle posts on the longitudinal axes of the houses; as at Stonehenge, a plain mortice-and-tenon joint would suffice to join aisle post to aisle plate. Reconstruction 2 shows one such interpretation with the addition of a substantial outer turf wall to support the ends of a common rafter roof. Considerable quantities of burned daub from wattling were found around the houses and in the postholes. This suggests that the outer walls were merely wattled screens, but these could conveniently have been framed on sleeper beams and could, even without earth-fast posts, have supported considerable weight. But it is noticeable that the post-settings are paired symmetrically, and this suggests an alternative more complex upper structure. The aisle posts could have been held together by tie-beams across the width of the house and the roof supported on couples at about 10’ centres. Such a structure - a principal rafter roof - is shown in Reconstruction 1 and in the perspective and axonometric drawings in figure 7. Further elaboration of the roof structure is too hypothetical, but could include bracing and crown posts on the tie-beams.
The hollow way continued as far as the end of the second bay of houses one and two. No further trace of it could be found, and it is therefore possible that the entrances to these longhouses were lateral (see cover drawing). At the east end of House 4 an additional posthole, 811, may have been for a gable door. Apart from a streak of burning which might indicate that a porch stood on the north side of bay five in House 5, there was no other evidence for door positions, and there is so far very little trace of the subdivisions that are found in comparable structures on the continent of
The houses so far uncovered (in about one third of the fort's total area) could perhaps have accommodated from 50 to 200 people: there is no way of estimating the density of settlement in the unexcavated area. This community survived long enough to wear down the entrance roadway, but had gone, it seems, before the replacement of rotten timber in its houses became necessary: one generation, then, or two at the most. The end was clearly abrupt. The gates were burned, the walls slighted, and the houses destroyed by fire."
