Those of you who are fans of Bernard Cornwell will know Whitley castle from his latest book: those of you who know their Roman stuff will know it as Epiacum Fort: and those who really know their stuff will know it’s the most complex set of defenses in the Roman world
Although all the existing literature assures us that the Great Henge Alignments of North Yorkshire are now covered by – The Langthorpe Earthwork, Cana Barn Henge, Nunwick Henge and Hutton Moor, finishing with the astounding triple Henge alignment at Thornborough, this may not necessarily be the case.
Wodens Law is actually the name of the great mountain that the Hill Fort is perched upon. Ok, so its not a mountain being a mere 500m high, but in this wild and desolate landscape it looks a lot more.The facts of the fort are impressive: there are multiple levels of ditch and bank defences surrounding the peak. There are considered to be three phases of occupation: firstly, a wall enclosed a substantial occupation area, this dated to the first century AD.
Hardknott Roman Fort, laying strewn like a discarded child’s toy on the high mountain side, impossibly canted to the east and perched precariously on a rugged cliff edge. Known to its builders as Mediobogdum, the fortress is square, as opposed to the usual rectangular shape. It is 115m to a side, and we have the traditional four gates. These are even today over head height.
Castle dykes it is a small class one henge, only 90m across, perched on the high ground up in the North Yorkshire dales.
← North YorkshireSite Details: Malham, in old English, means ‘the settlement in the gravelly place’, and they certainly knew what they were talking about. The village lies on the Craven district of Yorkshire, just inside the Yorkshire Dales National Park, an area of such outstanding beauty that, even in this outstandingly beautiful county it is …
A henge located north of Rudston,The henge was discovered as a cropmark on an aerial photograph in the early 1960s, although subsequent field investigation showed it to survive as an earthwork, albeit badly plough-damaged.
The stats for this Neolithic monument are astounding: 200m across, once a great circle of earthen banks and deep ditches. Today, almost lost: 5,000 years of plough and neglect have flattened the banks and filled the ditches, and Cana Henge is now nothing but a smoothly undulating grassy field on the moor overlooking Ripon.
An interesting heading in Robert Morden’s map of Lancashire (1695) places “The Brigantes” in Lancashire. Worth investigating to try to understand exactly what Robert Morden was trying to portray here.
Site GalleryGallery Empty
