The literature on the Iron Age in Britain is replete with descriptions of the form and the excavation of hilltop or hillslope enclosures commonly known as ‘hillforts.’
Areas in – or close to – the upland areas of Britain sometimes have particularly dense distributions of these kinds of site encircled by banks and ditches of sometimes intricate form. Herefordshire, in an area transitional between the uplands to the west and the lowland to the east possesses an especially high concentration. But can we regard them as a single class of site, with similar purposes? And how can we account for such a wide variation – in size, immediate location, number of ramparts, and complication of entranceways as we see today? This talk explores these questions in reference to over twenty-five years of the speaker’s engagement with these striking Herefordshire monuments.