Could it be a small Gallic fort?
Here is another trackway, but this one may be Gaulish in origin. It runs through a small copse, which straddles a small relatively narrow mound at the edge of the forest near to us. On the western side of the mound and beyond the trees the land stretches down through farmland, with a couple of ridges contouring the field for two or three hundred metres along the gentle hillside. On the other side of the narrow mound is a natural steep slope running down into a field on the eastern side of the copse. (If I knew how to do it, I would put an arrow into the picture to the right of the farmhouse to show where is chez nous.)
When I lived in Bristol, we used to go to a hill fort on the Cotswold Edge in Gloucestershire above Little Sodbury (alongside the A46). It was a square fort on the edge of a field. Three sides were fortified with two or three lines of ramparts or embankment. The fourth side was along the Edge. It was sufficiently steep for the defenders to consider that an attacker would find daunting the climb in front of them up the Cotswold Edge (ie its scarp slope). So that fourth side was not fortified. The edge doubled as a rampart on that side of the fort. Could the slope on the eastern side of the copse be in lieu of a defensive scarp, like in the Cotswolds?
At one end of this small mound are some basic clay fragments which may be the remains of Gallo-Roman tiles. At the other (photographed below) – only some three hundred metres away along the short ridge – is what may be evidence of a Gaulish entrance to the very small fort. And yes, could those ridges on the western side of the small fort be modest ramparts? Maybe I am guessing absurdly. It needs someone who knows more than me about small iron-age forts to say….
David Burrows
2 October 2023
dbfamilylaw 