Memorials to the dead had dominated the landscape of Neolithic and Bronze Age Herefordshire and very little effort appears to have been put into permanent house building. During the Iron Age this began to change and huge settlements were constructed to mark out territories and be a sign of power.

The hillforts of Iron Age Herefordshire are numerous. They are usually an irregular oval enclosure on a hilltop, covering an area of up to 50 acres in extent. They were enclosed camps with an inner rampart above a steep outer ditch designed to trap the enemy allowing the defenders to deal with them with no easy escape. The enclosure was often only surrounded by one rampart (univallate), which formed a ring around the contour of the hill about 100ft below the summit. Examples of this type of hillfort in Herefordshire include Aconbury, Credenhill,Wall Hills Camp and Sutton Walls.

Wall Hills Camp, Thornbury © Jenson Jones 2003

Later in the Iron Age the defensive structure changed from enclosures with one wall to ones with a series of concentric ramparts (multivallate). This made the enclosures more defensively secure and attack by the enemies more difficult. Often the multivallate camps would consist of an interior enclosure surrounded by one rampart with an outer annexe surrounded by another. Ivington, Little Doward and Midsummer Hill are all examples of this type of defence in Herefordshire.

The most accessible building materials in Herefordshire in the Iron Age were timber, soil and stone. Stone was used less for hillforts as it was difficult to transport up the hillside, it would have only have been used extensively if it could have been cut from the surrounding hillside. Timber would have been used for strengthening the ramparts and for interior buildings.

There are over 2,000 Iron Age hillforts in Britain with 30+ in Herefordshire. However, not all of the hillforts in Herefordshire were built at great heights: In fact only Croft Ambrey and the Herefordshire Beacon were built over 1,000ft above sea level. The majority of hillforts in Herefordshire are on gently sloping land with an average overall rise of 350 feet.

Each of the enclosures in Herefordshire appears to have been built independently for the optimum local command and not as part of a wider communication system.

Croft Ambrey, Credenhill and Midsummer Hill appear to have been carefully planned inside with closely packed lines of back to back housing in a rectangular plan. Settlements of the size of Croft Ambrey and Credenhill would have had a large population and would have needed a high level of organisation to function properly.

If it is to be considered that these hillforts were of a domestic rather than defensive nature then archaeologists have estimated figures of 75 to 100 people for every acre covered by an Iron Age hillfort. If this is correct then the population of Iron Age Herefordshire may have been as much as 30,000 people, this is a great deal larger than the 1086 Domesday Survey estimates for the county. (A History of Herefordshire, West, 1985).

These ‘domestic’ hillforts would have needed to farm large areas outside of their defences to feed the inhabitants, perhaps even several thousand acres.

Finds from Iron Age Herefordshire are rare and most theories of Iron Age life are made based on postholes and fragments of pottery. Metal objects are rare and most organic (natural) finds are dissolved in the acidic soil of the hill tops.

A discovery at Sutton Walls hillfort has provided the best insight into what the Iron Age Herefordian man looked like. In a grave at this site was found the bodies of many skeletons, men and boys, massacred as prisoners of war. From these bones the physical appearance of the skeletons was recreated. It was discovered that Iron Age man was an average of 5ft 8in tall (1 inch taller than modern man) and some skeletons were over 6ft tall. The men had long heads with prominent jaws and heavy features. Many of the skeletons were strong men into their 50’s and though their teeth had been worn the signs of decay were minimal. MG

Skull from Sutton Walls