The HILLFORT Mystery - What are we Missing?

A few weeks back we discussed Hillforts. Well a lot of you asked about Water. So in this weeks video we take a look at various ways in which the Iron Age people of Britain and beyond could have solved this mystery.

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Usual notices:
1. We are not historians. We enjoy researching and learning, and with that we enjoy sharing our journeys with you. That said, sources for information often listed below with credits.
2. Errors. Whilst we make every attempt to not include any errors, research, and piecing stories together from dozens of sources sometimes leads to one or two. I will note here if any are found:

A. Forgive the audio in the first minute. I was yards away from the A34.

Credit for assets

Filter: Snowman Digital and Beachfront
B-Roll Maps: Google Maps and Google Earth Studio
Maps: National Library of Scotland Maps:
OS Maps. Media License.
Stock Footage: Storyblocks
Music: Storyblocks, epidemicsound and artlist

Credit for images:

Shield: Claire H

Chapters:

00:00 - The Question
01:01 - The Mystery
02:36 - The Spring
05:01 - The Well
06:32 - The Ridgeway
09:30 - The Populated
11:47 - Back to Beacon

Sources:
Book: Danebury - Barry Cunliffe

#hillforts #hillfort

[intractablemaskvpmGy]

My instinct was a "cistern" for catching rain water. I looked up "dew pond" and the Wikipedia entry had some interesting things to say that caught my eye like the "chalk puddle" used to make one. Where my father grew up every house had a cistern and many of these dew ponds of every size are dotted about- primarily for livestock.

[peterjeremymckenzie]

Especially in Southern England the water table has been continually lowered since the 1800s by the extraction of groundwater for public waters supply and by agricultural drainage. There would have been far more springs and seasonal springs ( maybe in the camp ditches at times) than is evident today .

[georgenelson]

As. Retired Archaeogist from Texas, I have a huge interest in in Hill forts in Britain. As this is just a suggestion as to water supply, I could be wrong . In the dry American SW ( Texasis part of that ) there are 100s of thousands of Stock Tanks made by excavation to catch rain to form a pond . I have worked at many prehistoric and early historical sites . At one near Goliad Texas, one of a pair of 1700s Spanish colonial Missions in the area ( Rosario) was on a slight rise away from the local San Antonio river . It was enclosed by a stone wall with 2 corner bastions, but no well was found in the 2 archaeological excavations done the in 1936-41 and later in 1976 ( my experience) . There was instead a large deep cone shaped pit excavated during the 1700s in the center of the plaza . The fill indicated this was a pond of water, perhaps used to mine earth to make Adobe and or used as a water tank . As Britain is know to get a lot more rain then Texas, why are the deep trenches enclosing a hill fort able to catch and hold rain water?

[thedaftestnameicouldthinko]

In the Philippines, on the scarp above Cagayan de Oro, people live by their fields and fetch water from the bottom of the hill. Their solution is to send the kids to fetch the water.

[WildwoodTV]

In my youth, hiking the Breidden (inc. Rodney's Pillar) and other local hills I was always surprised by Springs bubbling up on the hills, maybe they're not there now. Having a Villa discovered in a field at my home with a spring & a clay pit, anything's possible.

[S-T-E-V-E]

Ha Ha! Midden, that's what my Mum used to call my Bedroom when I was a Teenager! 😂👍

[marklelohe]

One obvious source is collection of rainwater. I used to live on the NW rampart of Ham Hill in Somerset, quarried for stone during the Roman occupation and still is. However, there are many cisterns some of which may well predate the Romans. It is a very large earthworks castle and was inhabited at least during the iron age. Please would you reply with any historical references and knowledge you have about it. Thanks for your videos.

[jiversteve]

Ive been shouting dew ponds since the video started.

[scotbotvideos]

Occam's Razor is always a friend when uncovering seemingly unfathomable mysteries, and you worked it out, Paul.

[alexball]

Could you perhaps do a short video on dew ponds and the geology of wells? You hint at them and reasons why they'd work or not work a few times, but don't really go into detail. Dew ponds are such a feature of the downs it would be nice to know a bit more about them.

[paulinehedges]

Another GREAT video tackling anotger mystery..maybe they had a mixture of dew ponds, water in the ditches and dug puts to collect rainwater. Maybe a video about dew ponds and visits to those? Great scenery. Thank you.😊😊😊😊

[room]

Glad I subbed, this types of videos is exactly what I'm hill fort!

[davidhogan]

A slight dip dug out, even in chalk. Lined with clay and then drive the cattle back and forth across it to firm up the clay and waterproof the basin. Called puddling here in Dorset. And have you ever seen the water run off a well-thatched cottage? The way the reeds are laid makes the roof waterproof and sends the water down. Same as a reed or twig drain. Dig your ditch, lay reeds or straw, all laying the same way and bury them. It becomes an underground drainage pipe that cleans the water as well. Live reeds and plants in the pond clean it as well, if the water runs through them.

Swales are shallow, broad channels that are dug along the contour of the land, meaning they run horizontally across a slope. Their primary purpose is to slow down, capture, and redirect rainwater, allowing it to infiltrate the soil rather than run off. This process helps prevent erosion, improves soil moisture, and supports plant growth, making swales an essential tool in water management for sustainable agriculture. Puddling horizontal ditches in front of banks works as well. Probably not to much archaeological evidence of these methods after all this time but the methods are still used within living memory, although I am over seventy! LOL!

[danielferguson]

Scarborough Castle, on a seaside clifftop hill, between 200-300 feet high, was occupied, as a Hill fort from at least as far back as the Iron Age, in the 4th century AD there was a Roman Signal Station on the edge of the cliff, & in the Medieval period a mighty stone Castle. The Iron Age site included a number of bottle shape storage pits for grain, with various artifacts in their fills proving domestic occupation. Right in the heart of this area, and beside the Roman station there is a stone lined well, which served the Priest's house attached to the remains of a chapel built into the remains of the Roman structure, before the Norman conquest, which continued to serve the Castle through the Medieval period. At the heart of the Castle, near the 12th century Keep, & some distance from the Roman & Iron Age finds there is a well, some 170 feet deep, & stone lined for nearly half this distance from the top down. This still contains water, somewhere way down in the bottom, out of sight from the top without a light. The point is that your mention of the impossibility of making a well to reach water at a hill fort is pertinent to the Scarborough situation, because the rock that forms the hilltop on which Scarborough Castle, & former Hill fort stands is composed of thick layers of limestone on top of sandstone, underneath which are further layers of shale & other rocks, all exposed in the surrounding cliff faces. Yet there clearly were wells on the site, likely from an early date, which therefore included the period of the occupation as a hill fort. Certainly the Romans would have used the well by their station. That is interesting, because if the well had Roman origins associated with the tower one would have expected it to have been within the safety of the circuit of wall built to protect the tower. That it was not suggests that it already existed before the Romans used the site, or that it was not built until a later period, presumably therefore when the chapel was constructed. However it is very close to the priest house foundations, & may have been overridden by them, & the fact that there was a well nearby in the castle would seem to make the need for another at the chapel unnecessary, therefore an earlier, Iron Age, date is more likely. Interestingly, at a much later period, when the Castle received a considerable Garrison following the Jacobite rising of 1745, the water of the well by the chapel was diverted into a large, brick vaulted semi underground chamber, constructed in the Roman fort ditch, in which a large cistern was constructed to collect them, along with a major part of any rainwater that fell on the hilltop, via a series of drains made right across the site. This cistern still holds water today. So a large hilltop can be supplied with water, via similar drain/collection systems, or by the digging of wells, & as well as the collection from roofs etc, & at a push, by human or animal carriage. In just the same way the large amount of grain for which the 'silos' at Scarborough were dug was fair more than could have been grown on the site, even in the remaining 16 acres or so of ground available, though there may have been a bit more at earlier times, but still not much more. This grain then will have had to have been carried uphill also to the site, in considerable quantities. As with grain then so with water, if needed, by either human or animal carriage. At the height of a siege during the English Civil War, a shortage of water for the large garrison of some 700
soldiers, with some horses, cattle, & womenfolk, servants etc within the Castle, men had to resort to a fresh water spring at the base of the cliff to fetch water into the castle, under gunfire from enemy ships etc. so bringing it up the cliffs was possible, if not normal outside of an emergency.

[sandwiches]

I lived in a Hillfort in a prevous life. We made huge funnels using animal skins and wood. We caught the rain water and stored it in pots. It rains quite a lot in England.

[BrianJones-wchu]

Solid chalk or limestone would actually be very good material to dig through for a well. I wouldn't want to be an iron age well digger trying to go down say 30m but the material would be good.
I did some foundation excavation at Foxhill very near Liddington Hill fort and the chalk was perfect.

[arnman]

This video has convinced me that the water problem is still to be answered.

[chwb]

This made me think of Silbury Hill. Apparently, over long periods of time, natural springs have hills form around them. Going back to the time when these hill forts were built, a natural choice for location would be an isolated Spring Hill in the middle of a plane. They would be dry now but burrowing into the hill at the right place would reveal them.

[MrMonkeybat]

Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water.

[philcollinson]

In Australia many rural homes use water tanks that gather water from the rain that falls on the roof for drinking water. I can't help wondering if it could also have been as simple as basic roof gutters leading to barrels to collect water. If it works now in dry Australia, surely it'd work well in the UK. Nothing would exist in the archaeological record of such given stains in the ground show footings, but not the roof...but it is a very simple solution to the water issue.