A village within a henge
Avebury, Wiltshire
Standing
stones of the henge at Avebury, Wiltshire, England
The 17th-century antiquarian
John Aubrey famously wrote about Avebury that it “did as much excel Stoneheng
(sic) as a Cathedral does a Parish Church.” The magnificent Neolithic henge,
which encompasses the medieval village, olus the double stone circles hat are
situated inside it, puts the urbanized and over-interpreted Stonehenge in the
shade. Especially so, as you can walk up to and actually touch the 98 massive
gnarled sarsen stones (weighing between six and 60 tonnes each), which make up
the 5,000-year-old circles. Neolithic people probably did not live within the
henge – the village grew up in Saxon times.
Avebury is on the Ấ and Ấ between Calne and
Marlborough.
Iron age palace
Tre’r Ceri, Gwynedd
The 400-odd inhabitants of the surprisingly
complete Tre’s Ceri Iron Age hillfort on the Llyn peninsular on North Wales
must have thought they were monarchs of all they surveyed. From their 457m
(1,500ft) vantage point, they could look east to the blue heights of Snowdonia
and Anglesey and south across Cardigan Bay to the distant Preselis. No wonder
it is known as the Town of the Giants.
Tre’r Ceri, a moderate hill walk, is on a
mirror road leading from Llithfaen.
Living in the Iron Age – today
Butser Hill, Sussex and Catstell
Henllys, Pembrokeshire
No
wonder it is known as the Town of the Giants.
Understanding modern archaeology often
relies on imaginative reconstruction, such as the Iron Age villages that have
been created at Butser Hill on the Sussex downs and Castell Henllys, in Pem
brokeshire. The meticulously recreated, window-less, circular thatched huts may
seem dark and smoky to our modern eyes, but to our Celtic ancestors they were
home, and where the first concept of what we now know as village life must have
originated.
Butser Hill is four miles south of
Petersfied, and Castell Henllys is off the A487 east of Newport.
Butser
Hill
Saxon settlement
Breedon-on-the-Hill, Leicestershire
Perched on the edge of a limestone quarry,
the hill-top parish church of St Mary ay Breedon-on-the-Hill contains some of
the most remarkable examples of Saxon carvings in the shole of northern Europe.
Originally it was the site of a seventh-century monastery and settlement, which
was first sacked by the Danes and later became a 12th-century
priory. A reconstructed Saxon village can eb explored at West Stow in Suffolk.
Breedon-on-the-Hill is five miles north of
Ashby-de-la-Zouch.
Breedon-on-the-Hill,
Leicestershire
Lost village
Burton Dassett, Warwickshire
Burton Dassett, on the Dassett hills in
south Warwickshire, is one of around 2,000 deserted medieval villages in
England. Most, like Burton Dassett, were the result of a deliberate
depopulation by a landlord who found there was more profit in sheep than serfs.
In this case, it was squire Edward Belknap who evicted a dozen tenant farmers
and their families to make way for the more lucrative sheep and their even more
lucrative wool. The beautiful ironstone parish church of All Saints – known as
the Cathedral in the Hills – is virtually all that remains.
Burton Dassett Country Park is just off the
A423 Coventry-Banbury road.
Burton
Dassett, Warwickshire
Monastic village
Blanchland, Northumberland
There’s a feeling of being inside a barrack
clock when you stand in Blanchland’s L-shaped village square, surrounded by
neat, four-square sandstone cottages. Most of the cottages date from the 18th
century, when they were built to house lead miners from the nearby Weardale
lead mines. But Blanchland’s history goes back fat beyond that, to the 12th
century when the abbey was founded. The square was formerly the abbey
courtyard, and its 15th-century gatehouse still commands the village
entrance.
Blanchland is nine miles south of Hexham.
The
square was formerly the abbey courtyard, and its 15th-century
gatehouse still commands the village entrance.
