them across the more densely forested areas below became extended to the sea to the south. Pairs of cairns were aligned with the midwinter sunrise. High Peak, now no longer settled but a hill of ancestral significance, was prominent on the skyline. At Twin Cairn A, mushroom spores indicate construction taking place during late September or early October (Pokorný, Appendix 10), at the end of the grazing season. Fires were lit during the construction of this cairn. Much of the material that was burnt was mature oak wood derived from further forest clearance in the vicinity (Challinor, Appendix 9). The oak itself was a tree redolent with a particular symbolic load related to the hardness of its wood, its use in domestic dwellings and its longevity.

Shortly after, or in tandem with, the construction of the pebble cairns the first domesticated animals were introduced to the Pebblebed ridge as a supplement to the traditional diet of game (red and roe deer and boar), fish and fowl, nuts, mushrooms, roots, blackberries and other berries. The domesticated animals, principally cattle but also sheep, had kept the cleared areas open and made those areas that were still wooded much more open through intensive grazing of the understorey. The Pebblebed ridge was never permanently settled, since the soils in the cleared areas were becoming too poor and thin and increasingly acidic. The domestic animals were taken up onto the heathlands around May and collected and taken down to the surrounding lowlands in late October/early November, as they were in medieval times and the first half of the twentieth century. Purificatory fire rituals at the cairns, protecting the animals and humans against danger and sorcery, may have taken place in association with these movements of animals up onto the Pebblebeds ridge and down again to byres and enclosures where they were overwintered (see Chapter 3).

## Landscape in transition: open heathland (Early Middle Bronze Age and Middle Bronze Age, periods 4–5)

The opening up of the Pebblebed landscape and creation of the cairn lands free of many trees enabled graze and browse. It was a visited and utilized landscape, but not a landscape that was lived in by Middle Bronze Age populations. The mosaic of open herbaceous vegetation included more heath, with heather (ling) and possibly gorse becoming locally more dominant; soil podzoilization characterized the surface and sandy soils were drained of colour by leaching. Their lower, and mainly hidden, soil profiles were richer browns and reds as a result of iron enrichment, and these mantled the bedrock of pebbles. Grazing and numerous
pathways led to faster erosion of the loose sandy soils. Areas of bare soil grew and low vegetation and sandy trackways leading off the Pebblebeds upland were commonplace. As the soils no longer acted as a 'sponge' mantling the landscape, the thinner and sandier soils led to greater runoff and greater erosion, and the valley floors became wetter and infilled, if only temporarily, with sediments. Localized peat formation with a boggy herbaceous vegetation of rushes and open alder carr developed along the stream valleys, transforming some of them, making them less readily passable. This was now a landscape in transition – the grassland and the soils were disappearing, heath was more dominant, valleys wetter and woodlands and stands of trees thinner and fewer. The underlying pebbles were becoming more common on the surface as large areas were exposed on the higher ridge, and were increasingly exposed along valley sides, and in trackways becoming sunken in places and incised by both footfall and water runoff.

## Heath and grassland (Bronze Age periods 5–7)

Long-term grazing led to the open heath with sparse heather and ling kept down by grazing and burning to maintain a grassland sward. Beneath this, thinned, poor podzolic soils existed and peat formation in the valleys was locally appreciable, with up to half a metre of wet spongy peat existing under the tussocky sedge and alder carr. No longer was this a landscape rich for its seasonal graze; no longer was this a landscape with just glimpses of rare Pebblebed 'jewels' – they were commonly found over the entire landscape, in pathways, valley sides and on the top of the localized ridges traversing it. The landscape was being turned from one of life into one intended for the dead, with the more typical monumental cairns of the Mid to Late Bronze Age being constructed on the highest places, intervisible with each other and from the hilltops of the wider landscape beyond. In association with these, pebble sculptures/platforms perhaps associated with mortuary rites were constructed in close association with the monumental barrows, while at Jacob's Well the pebbles were crushed and met a symbolic death (Chapter 6). Human intervention had by now revealed the bones of the land by the removal of forest cover not only on the Pebblebed ridge but beyond it to the west and the east along the Otter and Exe valleys. On the Pebblebeds podzolization had occurred, and an open heath with low vegetation and heather (*Calluna vulgaris*), dense tussocky grasses interspersed with low woody plants and some patches of bramble might have been typical. Grazing and human presence and possible management by fire kept woody vegetation at bay, kept grasses
<figure><img src="image_136.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 8.5** Heath and light woodland on the Pebblebeds (photo: Mike Allen)</figcaption></figure>

down and enabled open bare soils to be exposed and eroded, exposing
patches of pebbles here and there, especially on large open areas, the
edges of slopes, the slopes themselves and in tracks and pathways. A
sensory revolution had taken place in which for the first time the intri-
cacy of the contours of the hills and valleys was revealed (Tilley 2007).
Settlement remained, however, on the periphery of the Pebblebeds and
along the Otter Vale – the economic value of the Pebblebeds diminished
and so did the range and variety of human tasks undertaken there. Hayne
Lane, situated just above the floodplain 300 m south of the river Otter,
and Castle Hill, about 500 m distant from and west of the Otter, represent
well the situation of MBA settlements with enclosures and round houses
along the Otter valley. They are situated respectively just 6 km and 3 km
to the northeast of the top of the Pebblebed ridge. Here the environmen-
tal evidence shows a well-developed MBA heathland landscape in the
vicinity of these settlements, characterized by extensive open areas with
heather and gorse as well as birch, oak and pine present (see Figure 8.5).
The representation of blackthorn and hawthorn suggests, together with
the tree species, a shrubby habitat in which open areas were regenerating
in patches while others were being cleared (Gale 1999: 194–6). Crops
grown include bread, emmer and spelt wheat, barley, bean, pea and flax (Clapham and Stevens 1999: 197). We suspect that in the Later Bronze Age, as elsewhere, localized high-ground peat occurred in patches as a result of localized soil runoff and generally wetter climatic conditions; peat growth at this time is seen in a number of places in the Southwest. Both soil and localized peat development may have led to reparation of the bare soil-stripped areas, covering pebbles and once again hiding them from immediate view and accessibility in many places.

## Discussion

Clearly the Pebblebeds today are an open, managed landscape with few resources and sparse tree cover (excepting modern plantations), with some open valleys and other wooded and boggy valleys. This is a humanly created landscape, and one very different from that experienced by prehistoric communities. The area was an open heathland; one exploited and used many centuries before any of the comparable heaths of Dorset, Sussex or Surrey. The Pebblebeds landscape was probably one of the first such landscapes to be utilized and was exploited starting with the Early Bronze Age/Beaker communities for economic and other resources.

### Early use

The Southwest is generally seen as being backward and peripheral in pre-history compared with societies in Wessex and the southeast. This perception has led to some landscapes receiving only a little archaeological attention, which has tended to reinforce such a picture. During the last 20 years numerous arguments have been made with regard to the Bronze Age in the Southwest as representing a distinct regional tradition in terms of both domestic and funerary architecture and grave good assemblages (Quinnell 1988; Johnson and Rose 1994; Bender et al. 2007). The evidence from the Pebblebeds discussed in Part I of this book indicates that, rather than being backward, these communities had a very different set of traditions, not only in terms of dwelling and burial practices but also in the manner in which populations related to the landscape and exploited its resources. The heathlands were created and utilized many centuries before comparable areas in south and southeast England. Areas such as Wytch Farm on the south Dorset heath (Cox and Hearne 1991), the West Sussex heath (Drewett et al. 1988) and Surrey heath (Bird and
Bird 1987; Cotton et al. 2004) show extensive heathland only in the Mid to Late Bronze Age as a result of clearance and human activity, whereas on the Pebblebeds there was podzolization and heathland in the Beaker period and Early Bronze Age, in tandem with the cairn building in this landscape.

Why is the Pebblebed landscape exploited so early? A combination of local Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age communities resident in the South Devon landscape and the comparative openness of the Pebblebeds landscape invited early exploitation; not for woodland resources, which were almost ubiquitously abundant, but for open graze and browse, for the provision of commanding views especially to the east and southeast across the Otter vale, and perhaps too for the mystical powers of the pebbles themselves. It was, however, the utilization of the landscape for graze, the removal of the vestiges of open woodland, that, as is the case on Surrey, Sussex and Dorset heaths, led to soil degradation and acidification, podzolization and heathland development, and larger-scale exposure of the pebbles.

From the Beaker period onwards we can clearly recognize certain long-term continuities in the manner in which the heath area was utilized up until the 1950s: its use for seasonal summer grazing on grassland created and maintained by animals and by fire burning or swaling. The medieval parish boundaries are long linear strips including both lowlying areas and upland heath areas and the heath was common land. It was only when this usage stopped following the Second World War that the entire area reverted to the 'classic' dry heath vegetation of heather, ling and gorse. Settlements since the Bronze Age have always concentrated on the heathland fringes and along perennial streams flowing off the heathlands, while they themselves have never been permanently settled. Clear evidence of this is in the settlement site of Colaton Raleigh, just below the Early Beaker pebble cairns and the Bronze Age sites discovered just to the north and east of the heathlands during the A30 and gas pipeline excavations (Fitzpatrick et al. 1999; Mudd and Joyce 2014).

## Hidden treasures

One of the attractions of this landscape may have been the pebbles themselves. Initially these attractive, rounded, colourful pebbles would have been hidden in the landscape, with rare glimpses of them in the open woodland and in rare exposures. Most were hidden by moderate soil cover and vegetation. Their rarity added to their social and special
value. Exploitation of the landscape, however, gave rise to soil deflation, podzolization and erosion, with gullying in the valleys and exposures on hillslopes and stream beds in valley bottoms, eventually leading to larger exposures on the upland itself. Although they had become socially and symbolically important materials utilized in the construction of the early pebble cairns, with the opening up of the heathland these same materials were now available in abundance and they were used to construct large cairns high up in the landscape and symbolic sculptural forms. Meanwhile at Jacob's Well the pebbles were being burnt, crushed and destroyed. By the Early Iron Age they appear to have lost their symbolic significance. Pebbles now became simply useful and abundant local building materials utilized in the construction of Woodbury Castle and domestic dwellings. It was only in the late eighteenth century onwards that their material and aesthetic properties became appreciated once more (see Part II). This loss of significance is concomitant with soil developments and regrowth of the peat engulfing pebble exposures and erasing them, temporarily, from the landscape.

## Summary and a social landscape model

Landscapes are not passive platforms upon which communities acted, but holistic arenas in which people acted and interacted (Tilley 1994, 2004, 2008, 2010). The changing landscape provided the potential that enabled and facilitated human actions, that is, environmental possibility (cf. Bell and Walker 1992, 8), rather than determined human action (environmental determinism); those communities had choice and decision. The changing landscape invited and encouraged those actions and activities. From this we can create a model for the interaction and development of the prehistoric landscape and land-use at the Pebblebeds, for they are integrally entwined.

1. The Pebblebeds, by virtue of the thick bed of pebbles and the soils developed over it, probably supported a more open woodland and vegetation subtly but significantly and distinctly different from that of the surrounding area.

2. Glades already clear and free from extensive woodland (cf. Vera 1997, 2000) were exploited for graze and pasture from earliest times, and probably from the Mid to Later Neolithic.

3. Within this landscape, rare multicoloured pebbles came into view; pebbles that had been seen elsewhere such as the Otter river and the
beach at Budleigh Salterton, but here they were appearing from the ground almost as if being born. The pebbles are visually attractive, and most of a size that is easily collected and handled. In the Beaker period they were less visible and rarer, and became special, important and significant – and so did the Pebblebeds.

4. As human activity increased in the Middle Bronze Age (visitations, tree and shrub removal, and extensive grazing), podzolization and the development of heath increased. The sandy soils were prone to deflation, erosion and colluviation, revealing exposures of pebbles on the hilltop and slopes, as well as in narrow cuts made by footpaths and tracks.

5. Subsequently in the later Middle to Later Bronze Age pebbles were selected, collected, treasured, used and made into big cairns and pebble platforms. Each pebble is unique and the colours attractive, and pebbles became significant and part of the valued social 'currency' of the landscape – they are imbued with meaning and may represent a form of 'wealth'. This wealth of pebbles enriched the communities venerating them or 'owning' this landscape (see Chapter 7).

6. After this period and at about 1300–1400 BC the use and significance of the pebbles diminished, and this coincides with soil development and local high peat growth in the Late Bronze Age that swallowed up what were once larger exposures, again hiding many of the pebbles below the soil – taking them back into the earth.

Postscript (Michael Allen): The spatial visualization of these landscapes requires the palaeo-environmental scientific data, interpretative and imaginative cognition, familiarization with the physicality of the landscape and a certain amount of empathy. In the chalk downlands, where I have worked for over 40 years, that empathy clearly exists. The interpretation here has been more difficult because this is a more challenging landscape and my familiarity with the topography, soils and landscape is not yet as great, and I have, in part, been reliant on Chris for this.
## Signing the land: Woodbury Castle and hilltop enclosures in the Iron Age of East Devon

Woodbury Castle is one of only two Iron Age hillforts situated on the Pebblebed heathlands. The hillfort is univallate, consisting of a massive bank and external ditch and a counterscarp bank to the east of original entrances to the south and the north, through which the modern and very busy B3180 road passes. In addition there are outworks on the northern, southern and western sides. The hillfort is within a mature plantation of beech trees and is situated at the highest point in the landscape (175 m OD) with panoramic views from its ramparts as far as the distant tors of Dartmoor to the west, Exmoor, the Raddon and the Blackdown hills to the northwest and north, the sea to the southwest and the East Hill and Peak Hill ridges to the east. Views south to nearby Black Hill are the most restricted. By contrast views out from the interior are blocked by the bulk of the massive ramparts, except for a small part of the northern sector of the monument where, standing close to the rampart, you can just see over to the western aspect. The interior, enclosing an area of 2 ha, slopes markedly to the south and east and the interior slope is remarkably even and uniform. This was probably achieved by the careful removal of the natural surface material when construction of the ramparts was undertaken.

The shape of the hillfort (Figure 9.1) is most unusual, almost resembling a figure of eight with the centre removed. There is a marked difference between the northern sector and that to the south. The rampart on the western side between the north and the south entrances has a broad curvilinear flow. This is repeated on the eastern side of the north entrance for a short distance of about 40 m. Thereafter the course of the rampart diverges at an angle running a straight course to the southeast corner, where it bends sharply in a southwest direction for 60 m (Figure 9.2).
<figure><img src="image_137.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 9.1** Plan of Woodbury Castle (adapted from Miles 1975)</figcaption></figure>
<figure><img src="image_138.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 9.2** The ramparts of Woodbury Castle: eastern side (Source: author)</figcaption></figure>

It then turns to the west for 120 m before sharply turning to the north for another 60 m to adjoin the southern entrance on the eastern side. These two distinct forms of rampart style, that to the north oval in form and uniformly curved, and that to the south with straight lines and sharp corners, suggest a hillfort that was built in two phases with an extensive remodelling of the overall design.

The earliest hillfort seems to be the sector to the north, originally quite small, covering an area of about 100 m north-south and 60 m west-east, roughly oval in shape, and occupying, as we might expect, the highest part of the hill. It probably had a single north-facing entrance situated at the very highest point, although this cannot be verified. It is suggested that the much larger southern part of the enclosure was a later addition. So it seems likely that the hillfort started out as a rather modest unival-late construction with a single bank with external ditch, which was then dramatically remodelled and enlarged to three times its original size with the addition of an external rampart. Some support for this idea is given in a recent RCHME survey, which identified traces of a bank in the centre of the northern part of the hillfort interior (Fletcher 2000: 168, 170). The southern entrance might have been created when this enlargement took place, with the material that originally formed the southern side of the original hillfort being removed as part of the process of constructing the new ramparts further to the south.
The curvilinear line of the northern sector of the western rampart runs along and follows the line of the western scarp slope of the Pebblebeds that is steepest and most dramatic here. The remainder of the western rampart of the Phase II hillfort is, by contrast, set back some distance from the scarp edge in an area where the head of a shallow coombe cuts into the ridge from the west. To the south and east the land drops away gently in the same manner as the hillfort interior.

About 60 m to the north of the entrance an outwork or cross-ridge dyke, of more modest scale, marks the point at which the land drops down to the head of a wide, shallow coombe that runs to the southeast in the direction of the river Otter. This outwork consists of a ditch with two parallel banks running west–east. At the eastern end the outwork changes direction at an angle to run southeast. This may again have been a later addition. To the west the dyke runs dramatically, and unnecessarily, in the manner of the Wessex cross-ridge dykes (Tilley 2010: ch. 4) to the very bottom of the scarp slope and the spring line, where a stone-lined pit, the Soldier's Well, is found.

The internal rampart of the hillfort was probably constructed from material both taken from the interior and dug out from the external ditch. There is much flint and chert visible and exposed along the course of the ramparts, together with pebbles and soil, and it seems likely that this material was originally exposed locally on top of the pebbles along this part of the ridge top, as it is today along the top of the Crook Plantation ridge only 2 km to the southeast. There could have been no possibility of creating a rampart construction with external timbers given the nature of the primary building material – pebbles – and the sheer scale of the monument.

The rampart adjacent to the original northern entrance is markedly heightened but there is no evidence of an inturn that may have been destroyed by road construction in the past. The outer counterscarp bank of the hillfort on the eastern and southern sides is considerable slighter than the main rampart and looks impressive only from the inner rampart looking out across the ditch. From the exterior it appears relatively slight, suggesting it is an embellishment rather than defensive in nature.

To the south of the hillfort there is a series of slighter banks and ditches creating a roughly triangular-shaped enclosure of uncertain function, with an entrance to the southeast but lacking any connection to the main hillfort interior. The shape of this outwork is reminiscent of that of Blackbury Castle (see below and Figure 9.8)

On the western side of the hillfort in the northern sector there is an additional outer bank and ditch with a counterscarp bank below.
The latter does not run round to the northern entrance, and the outer bank and ditch terminate about 50 m short of the south entrance. In addition there is a series of short and much slighter irregular outworks consisting of an internal bank and external ditch running along the scarp slope on the southern part of the Phase II enclosure. To the north large sections of the rampart have slumped down into the main ditch as a result of extensive badger activity. The internal ditch here is situated approximately half-way down the scarp slope, with the bank at the very top. There may have been artificial scarping of the slope in this sector to steepen and exaggerate it. Fletcher (2000: 170) notes that the additional outworks on the western side, where the slope is steepest, are hardly necessary from a defensive point of view and may have been added for visual effect from the west, where the hillfort, on the skyline, looks most dramatic. There may also have been a trackway following the line of the modern track, running diagonally up the hillslope from the northwest towards the southern end of the hillfort in this area.

## Excavations

In 1971 the road through the hillfort was widened and rescue excavations were undertaken in advance of this work along parts of a narrow 3–4-m-wide strip beside it. Beneath the inner rampart at the south entrance a line of nine post holes were discovered cut into the old ground surface. These were filled with large pebbles: collapsed packing for the wooden posts. The posts were small, about 15–20 cm in diameter, and appear to have been deliberately removed rather than having rotted *in situ*. This was probably the remains of a palisade enclosure that pre-dated the construction of the rampart (Miles 1975: 187). So initially Woodbury Castle was a hilltop enclosure defined by wooden posts.

Excavation of the defences on the west side of the south entrance demonstrated that the rampart had been constructed in two distinct phases. The first phase of the rampart had an original height of 1.9 m. It was carefully constructed with bands of sandy gravel and pebbles and was probably capped with a wooden palisade fence. In a second building phase it was heightened to 2.7 m, forming a more robust barrier, again capped with a wooden palisade fence at the front that had an inturn to the original entrance. The exact position of this could not be determined as it is concealed beneath the modern road (Miles 1975: 191). Within the hillfort the excavations revealed traces of post holes indicating the
<figure><img src="image_139.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 9.3** Woodbury Castle, section through the inner rampart at the north entrance. Source: Miles 1975: fig. 7. Reproduced by permission of Henrietta Quinnell and of the Devon Archaeological Society</figcaption></figure>

presence of timber structures, of uncertain form: some may be circular, others rectangular.

Excavations on the west side of the north entrance showed that the bulk of the inner rampart was composed of large pebbles revetted at the rear to half its height with turfs in order to maintain the stability of the structure and at the front with sandy soil (see Figure 9.3). Again a two-phase construction of the rampart is indicated increasing its height. The west side of the entrance had a revetment formed by large, substantial timber posts, up to 50 cm in diameter, set in pits with a pebble packing. The second-phase rampart appears to have had a revetment of chert blocks (Miles 1975: 195). Contrasting with the pebbles, these chert blocks would have served to emphasize it.

The cross-ridge dyke to the north of the hillfort was again constructed in two phases, the first-phase rampart being about 1.9 m high without any timber structures. This was heightened to about 2.5 m and capped with a timber structure (Figure 9.4) that Miles suggests may have been a fighting platform (Miles 1975: 199).

Thus Woodbury Castle had a complex history with at least three constructional phases. The place was altered dramatically. Initially it was a hilltop wooden-fenced enclosure, possibly approximately oval in form, constructed on the very highest point of the ridge and rather slight. This enclosure might date back to the Late Bronze Age (c. 1000–500 BC). It was destroyed and the place then seems to have been abandoned since a thin layer of soil formed over the top of the post holes. After a period of time a new enclosure was built on the ridge top. This was a substantial earthwork enclosure consisting of two banks with external ditches on the western side and possibly a single bank and external ditch to the east. The bank was capped with a wooden palisade fence. There
<figure><img src="image_140.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 9.4** Section through the cross-ridge dyke to the north of Woodbury Castle. Source: Miles 1975: fig. 10. Reproduced by permission of Henrietta Quinnell and of the Devon Archaeological Society</figcaption></figure>

may have been just a single north-facing entrance. At some later stage the enclosure was substantially enlarged to the south and provided with an additional south-facing entrance. At the same time the banks were heightened, a new palisade fence was constructed on top, together with additional outworks on the western side and counterscarp banks on the eastern and southern sides. The cross-ridge dyke to the north was also enlarged and strengthened, with a timber structure being built on top of it. This might originally, like the initial timber palisade structure, have dated back to the Late Bronze Age. The north entrance of the hillfort was much elaborated in the second phase, being flanked by large timbers and chert blocks.

Finds from the limited rescue archaeological excavations were meagre: about 16 small sherds of pottery, 10 struck or worked pieces of flint, part of a polishing stone and a loom weight, both fashioned out of pebbles (Miles 1975: 199–201). The few sherds can be roughly dated to between 500–300 BC. One charcoal sample from the base of a small clay-lined pit beneath the inner rampart at the south entrance gave a date of 180 BC to AD 220, but this does not provide a reliable date for the hillfort construction.
On the basis of the pottery evidence at least Woodbury Castle does not appear to have been occupied during the main phases of occupation at Hembury, or at Blackbury Castle to the east (see discussion below). Miles suggests a virtually aceramic tradition in this area of East Devon is indicated.

## Iron Age domestic settlement and the heathland

Apart from Woodbury and Belbury Castles there are no known prehistoric settlements on the Pebblebed heathlands themselves. In 1985 part of a curvilinear single-ditched enclosure with an entrance gap was recorded by aerial photography as a cropmark in a field adjoining the heathland at Colaton Raleigh Common by Frances Griffith (SY 05658 87686). It had a probable entrance gap on the eastern side and was presumed to be of Late Bronze Age or Early Iron Age date (Figure 9.5). The enclosure is located on a very gentle east-facing shelf of land that begins to drop more steeply

<figure><img src="image_141.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 9.5** Aerial photograph of the Colaton Raleigh enclosure, clearly visible as a cropmark by the trees to the left of the middle of the photograph. Devon County Council (ref. DAP/FB 12). Courtesy of Frances Griffith and Devon County Council, Copyright reserved</figcaption></figure>
<figure><img src="image_142.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 9.6** The location of the Colaton Raleigh enclosure. (A), (C), (D): pebble cairns of Beaker/Early Bronze Age date; (B): Late Bronze Age gold bracelet find; (E): eighteenth/nineteenth-century house foundation; (F): enclosure site (Source: author)</figcaption></figure>

away just to the east of the enclosure at a height of c. 80 m OD. Nothing is visible on the ground.

The location is of considerable interest because of its proximity to five Early Bronze Age pebble cairns discussed in Chapter 3 only a short distance away to the north and the west. From these cairns it is possible to look down onto the enclosure below them, suggesting that these places might be related. A Late Bronze Age hoard consisting of three gold bracelets together with a folded sheet of gold was discovered only 250 m distant to the north (Taylor 1999) (Figure 9.6). It is located in a sheltered position at the base of the Pebblebed heathlands with land rising sharply to the north and the west. There are wide-ranging views to the south towards the coast, with High Peak and the Peak Hill Ridge visible on the skyline.

Trial excavations showed that virtually all the enclosure ditch and the interior had been destroyed by deep ploughing. One gorse sample that proved to be suitable for AMS radiocarbon dating from the base of the enclosure ditch gave a date of BP 2090+/-30; 160 to 130 BC and 120
BC to 10 to 20 AD (BETA 308029). This date shows that the enclosure ditch was open in the middle Iron Age and contemporary with Woodbury Castle 2.25km distant to the east. Other diagnostic artefacts suggest that the general area of the enclosure site was used or occupied during the Mesolithic, the early and middle Bronze Age, the Iron Age, and during the eighteenth or early nineteenth century (Tilley *et al.* n.d.).

The Colaton Raleigh enclosure is situated in precisely the right position to make possible both the production of crops and the seasonal exploitation of the heathland in spring and summer for grazing in its immediate vicinity, a practice dating back to the Early Bronze Age. This was when the virgin oak/hazel forest of the present-day heathland areas was opened out for the first time and the earliest monuments on it, pebble cairns, were constructed (see Chapter 8).

The Colaton Raleigh enclosure is one of ten cropmark sites presumed to be of Late Bronze Age or Iron Age date recorded in the vicinity of the heathlands between the Exe estuary to the west and the river Otter to the east (Griffith and Quinnell 1999a). Excavated settlements and house circles of Bronze Age and Iron Age date with associated fields occur to the north of the heathlands along its fringe in the same places, demonstrating long-term settlement continuity in the area (Fitzpatrick *et al.* 1999; Mudd and Joyce 2014).

## Woodbury Castle in its regional context

Woodbury Castle is one of a series of Iron Age hillforts and enclosures in East Devon. In this section I review Woodbury Castle in terms of its regional context and relationship with other hilltop enclosures in the wider landscape going beyond the Pebblebed heathlands.

Traditionally the Iron Age is the period from 700 BC to AD 43 and the Roman conquest (Cunliffe 1995: 27). The enclosure of these hilltops probably began in the earlier first millennium BC as elsewhere in western and southern England, but at present there is no direct excavation evidence confirming this. Late Bronze Age metalwork is recorded as chance finds in the vicinity of Membury and Woodbury (Pearce 1983). The construction of hilltop monuments is the most important defining feature of the period.

In the vicinity of and between the river Axe to the east and the river Exe to the west there are 19 hillforts and enclosures attributable to the Iron Age (Wall 1906; Fox 1996) (Figure 9.7; Tables 9.1–9.5). One, Raddon, is known only through aerial photography and limited
<figure><img src="image_143.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 9.7** East Devon hillforts: locations and intervisibility. Numbers on map refer to frequencies of visible Iron Age hillforts and enclosures (Source: author)</figcaption></figure>
<table><caption>Table 9.1 East Devon hillforts and enclosures: locations and topography.</caption><thead><tr><td>Name</td><td>Site number</td><td>HASL</td><td>Visible hill forts</td><td>Topography</td><td>Hill slopes</td><td>Relationship to contours</td></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Branscombe: Berry Castle</td><td>1</td><td>140</td><td>0</td><td>Cliff edge</td><td>Cliff edge to S</td><td>Imposed</td></tr><tr><td>Otterton: High Peak</td><td>2</td><td>157</td><td>2</td><td>Cliff edge</td><td>Cliff edge to E</td><td>Mimetic?</td></tr><tr><td>Axmouth: Hawkesdown Hill</td><td>3</td><td>132</td><td>1</td><td>Spur</td><td>Steep to N, S and W</td><td>Mimetic: 3 sides</td></tr><tr><td>Cadbury: Cadbury Castle</td><td>4</td><td>253</td><td>4</td><td>Hill island</td><td>Steep to N</td><td>Imposed</td></tr><tr><td>Luppitt: Dumpdon</td><td>5</td><td>261</td><td>2</td><td>Hill island</td><td>Steep S, W and E</td><td>Mimetic: 3 sides</td></tr><tr><td>Membury: Membury Castle</td><td>6</td><td>204</td><td>2</td><td>Hill island</td><td>Steep S, W and E</td><td>Mimetic</td></tr><tr><td>Musbury: Musbury Castle</td><td>7</td><td>179</td><td>1</td><td>Spur</td><td>Steep to S, W and E</td><td>Mimetic: 2 sides</td></tr><tr><td>Ottery St Mary: Belbury Castle</td><td>8</td><td>115</td><td>3</td><td>Hill island</td><td>Gentle all directions</td><td>Mimetic: 3 sides</td></tr><tr><td>Payhembury: Hembury Fort</td><td>9</td><td>245</td><td>5</td><td>Spur</td><td>Steep S, W and E</td><td>Mimetic: 3 sides</td></tr><tr><td>Sidbury: Sidbury Castle</td><td>10</td><td>196</td><td>0</td><td>Hill island</td><td>Steep all directions</td><td>Mimetic</td></tr><tr><td>Stockland: Great Castle</td><td>11</td><td>205</td><td>1</td><td>Slope</td><td>Gentle all directions</td><td>Imposed</td></tr><tr><td>Stockland: Little Castle</td><td>12</td><td>180</td><td>1</td><td>Slope</td><td>Gentle all directions</td><td>Imposed</td></tr><tr><td>Woodbury: Woodbury Castle</td><td>13</td><td>183</td><td>7</td><td>Scarp edge</td><td>Steep to W, gentle to S, N and E</td><td>Mimetic: 1 side</td></tr><tr><td>Chudleigh: Castle Dyke</td><td>14</td><td>140</td><td>0</td><td>Hill island</td><td>Steep to N</td><td>Mimetic: 1 side</td></tr><tr><td>Killerton Park: Dolbury</td><td>15</td><td>130</td><td>4</td><td>Hill island</td><td>Steep to E and S</td><td>Mimetic</td></tr><tr><td>Southleigh: Blackburn Castle</td><td>16</td><td>180</td><td>0</td><td>Ridge top</td><td>Flat W and E, steep to N and S</td><td>Imposed</td></tr><tr><td>Exeter: Stoke Hill</td><td>17</td><td>155</td><td>5</td><td>Hill island</td><td>Steep to N</td><td>Mimetic</td></tr><tr><td>Ashcombe: Castle Dyke</td><td>18</td><td>225</td><td>0</td><td>Ridge top</td><td>Flat or gentle slopes</td><td>Imposed</td></tr><tr><td>Stockleigh Pomeroy: Raddon</td><td>19</td><td>214</td><td>5</td><td>Hill island</td><td>Steep to N and S</td><td>Mimetic?</td></tr></tbody></table>

Note: For locations see Figure 9.7.
<table><caption>Table 9.2 East Devon hillforts: views out from the enclosures and entrances and to the sea.</caption><thead><tr><td>Name</td><td>Site number</td><td>Views out across landscape</td><td>View from entrance</td><td>Sea visible</td></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Branscombe: Berry Castle</td><td>1</td><td>Extensive to W, E and S; restricted to N</td><td>NW: across ridge</td><td>Yes</td></tr><tr><td>Otterton: High Peak</td><td>2</td><td>Panoramic</td><td>Not known</td><td>Yes</td></tr><tr><td>Axmouth: Hawkesdown Hill</td><td>3</td><td>Extensive to N and S along Axe valley and to west; restricted to E</td><td>E: along ridge top</td><td>Yes</td></tr><tr><td>Cadbury: Cadbury Castle</td><td>4</td><td>Panoramic</td><td>SE: down Exe valley to sea</td><td>Yes</td></tr><tr><td>Luppitt: Dumpdon</td><td>5</td><td>Extensive to S; limited to W, E and N</td><td>NE: up Otter valley</td><td>No</td></tr><tr><td>Membury: Membury Castle</td><td>6</td><td>Extensive to S; limited in other directions</td><td>SE: towards Axe valley; W to ridge</td><td>Yes</td></tr><tr><td>Musbury: Musbury Castle</td><td>7</td><td>Extensive to S and N up and down Axe valley; limited to W and E</td><td>NE: along ridge top; SW: to tributary of Axe</td><td>Yes</td></tr><tr><td>Ottery St Mary: Belbury Castle</td><td>8</td><td>Extensive to S and N; limited to E and W</td><td>E: to Otter valley</td><td>Yes</td></tr><tr><td>Payhembury: Hembury Fort</td><td>9</td><td>Extensive to W, S &amp; N; limited to E</td><td>SW: down Clyst valley; NE up Wolf valley</td><td>Yes</td></tr><tr><td>Sidbury: Sidbury Castle</td><td>10</td><td>Extensive to S down Sid vale to sea; limited to N, W and E</td><td>W: to nearby ridge</td><td>Yes</td></tr><tr><td>Stockland: Great Castle</td><td>11</td><td>Limited to W, E, S &amp; N</td><td>E: to Corry Brook</td><td>No</td></tr><tr><td>Stockland: Little Castle</td><td>12</td><td>As above</td><td>NE: to ridge</td><td>No</td></tr></tbody></table>
<table><tr><td>Woodbury: Woodbury Castle</td><td>13</td><td>Restricted to S; extensive in all other directions</td><td>S: towards Black Hill; N: up to Clyst valley</td><td>Yes</td></tr><tr><td>Chudleigh: Castle Dyke</td><td>14</td><td>Extensive to NE; limited to S and E</td><td>E &amp; SE: to stream valleys</td><td>No</td></tr><tr><td>Killerton Park: Dolbury</td><td>15</td><td>Panoramic</td><td>NE: up Culm valley</td><td>No</td></tr><tr><td>Southleigh: Blackburn Castle</td><td>16</td><td>Restricted to E and W along ridge top, to N and S across valleys to nearby ridges</td><td>S: across valley to ridge beyond</td><td>No</td></tr><tr><td>Exeter: Stoke Hill</td><td>17</td><td>Panoramic S to sea; extensive to W and E</td><td>Entrance facing approx. SE down Exe valley</td><td>Yes</td></tr><tr><td>Ashcombe: Castle Dyke</td><td>18</td><td>Panoramic</td><td>E: across ridge</td><td>Yes</td></tr><tr><td>Stockleigh Pomeroy: Raddon</td><td>19</td><td>Panoramic, limited to NE and E; extensive to W and S</td><td>Not known</td><td>Yes</td></tr></table>

Note: For locations see Figure 9.7.
<table><caption>Table 9.3 East Devon hillforts: the size and characteristics of the enclosure interiors.</caption><thead><tr><td>Name</td><td>Site number</td><td>Enclosed area (ha)</td><td>Interior</td><td>Max. internal dimensions</td><td>Visibility across interior from rampart to rampart</td></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Branscombe: Berry Castle</td><td>1</td><td>3</td><td>Flat</td><td>285 m E-W; 110 m N-S</td><td>Yes</td></tr><tr><td>Otterton: High Peak</td><td>2</td><td>?</td><td> DESTROYED</td><td>?</td><td>?</td></tr><tr><td>Axmouth: Hawkesdown Hill</td><td>3</td><td>2.5</td><td>Slopes from E to W and from centre to ramparts</td><td>250 m E-W; 100 m N-S</td><td>No</td></tr><tr><td>Cadbury: Cadbury Castle</td><td>4</td><td>1.6</td><td>Domed interior rising to centre</td><td>120 m E-W; 95 m N-S</td><td>No</td></tr><tr><td>Luppitt: Dumpdon</td><td>5</td><td>2.6</td><td>Slopes from S to N</td><td>260 m N-S; 120 m W-E</td><td>No</td></tr><tr><td>Membury: Membury Castle</td><td>6</td><td>1.3</td><td>Rises to centre</td><td>225 m N-S; 60 m W-E</td><td>No</td></tr><tr><td>Musbury: Musbury Castle</td><td>7</td><td>3.4</td><td>Rises to centre</td><td>390 m NE-SW; 130 m NW-SE</td><td>No</td></tr><tr><td>Ottery St Mary: Belbury Castle</td><td>8</td><td>1</td><td>Flat</td><td>150 m N-S; 60 m E-W</td><td>Yes</td></tr><tr><td>Payhembury: Hembury Fort</td><td>9</td><td>3.0</td><td>Rises to centre and from S to N</td><td>325 m N-S; 90 m E-W</td><td>No</td></tr><tr><td>Sidbury: Sidbury Castle</td><td>10</td><td>4.0</td><td>Slopes markedly from S to N and from E to W</td><td>500 m NW-SE; 100 m W-E</td><td>No</td></tr></tbody></table>
<table><tr><td>Stockland: Great Castle</td><td>11</td><td>4.0</td><td>Slopes from west to east</td><td>270 m N-S; 230 m E-W</td><td>Yes</td></tr><tr><td>Stockland: Little Castle</td><td>12</td><td>1</td><td>Flat</td><td>126 m N-S; 104 m E-W</td><td>Yes</td></tr><tr><td>Woodbury: Woodbury Castle</td><td>13</td><td>2</td><td>Slopes from north to south</td><td>230 m N-S; 130 m W-E</td><td>Yes</td></tr><tr><td>Chudleigh: Castle Dyke</td><td>14</td><td>2.5</td><td>Domed, high point SE end</td><td>240 m NE-SW; 180 m NW-SE</td><td>No</td></tr><tr><td>Killerton Park: Dolbury</td><td>15</td><td>2.2</td><td>Rises to centre</td><td>300 m W-E; 100 m N-S</td><td>No</td></tr><tr><td>Southleigh: Blackburn Castle</td><td>16</td><td>1.3</td><td>Flat</td><td>180 m E-W; 70 m N-S</td><td>Yes</td></tr><tr><td>Exeter: Stoke Hill</td><td>17</td><td>1.9</td><td>Domed, rising to centre</td><td>213 m E-W; 120 m N-S</td><td>No</td></tr><tr><td>Ashcombe: Castle Dyke</td><td>18</td><td>0.6</td><td>Flat</td><td>90 m N-S; 90 m W-E</td><td>Yes</td></tr><tr><td>Stockleigh Pomeroy: Raddon</td><td>19</td><td>1?</td><td>Rises to centre</td><td>?</td><td>No</td></tr></table>

Note: For locations see Figure 9.7.
<table><caption>Table 9.4 East Devon hillforts: types (U: univallate; M: multivallate), presence of additional ramparts and entrance orientation.</caption><thead><tr><th>Name</th><th>Site number</th><th>U</th><th>M</th><th>Additional ramparts/ ditches</th><th>Entrances facing</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Branscombe: Berry Castle</td><td>1</td><td>+</td><td></td><td>W end</td><td>1: W</td></tr><tr><td>Otterton: High Peak</td><td>2</td><td>+</td><td></td><td>None</td><td>1: E?</td></tr><tr><td>Axmouth: Hawkesdown Hill</td><td>3</td><td>+</td><td></td><td>None</td><td>1: E</td></tr><tr><td>Cadbury: Cadbury Castle</td><td>4</td><td>+</td><td></td><td>None</td><td>1: SE</td></tr><tr><td>Luppitt: Dumpdon</td><td>5</td><td>+</td><td></td><td>N end</td><td>1: NE</td></tr><tr><td>Membury: Membury Castle</td><td>6</td><td>+</td><td></td><td>None</td><td>2: W, SE</td></tr><tr><td>Musbury: Musbury Castle</td><td>7</td><td>+</td><td></td><td>NE end</td><td>2: SW & NE</td></tr><tr><td>Ottery St Mary: Belbury Castle</td><td>8</td><td>+</td><td></td><td>None</td><td>1: SE</td></tr><tr><td>Payhembury: Hembury Fort</td><td>9</td><td></td><td>+</td><td>N/A</td><td>2: SW & NE</td></tr><tr><td>Sidbury: Sidbury Castle</td><td>10</td><td>+</td><td></td><td>None</td><td>1: W</td></tr><tr><td>Stockland: Great Castle</td><td>11</td><td>+</td><td></td><td>None</td><td>1: E?</td></tr><tr><td>Stockland: Little Castle</td><td>12</td><td>+</td><td></td><td>None</td><td>1: NE?</td></tr><tr><td>Woodbury: Woodbury Castle</td><td>13</td><td>+</td><td></td><td>NW end</td><td>2: N & SW</td></tr><tr><td>Chudleigh: Castle Dyke</td><td>14</td><td>+</td><td></td><td>None</td><td>2: E, SE</td></tr><tr><td>Killerton Park: Dolbury</td><td>15</td><td>+</td><td></td><td>None</td><td>1: NE</td></tr><tr><td>Southleigh: Blackbury Castle</td><td>16</td><td>+</td><td></td><td>None</td><td>1: S</td></tr><tr><td>Exeter: Stoke Hill</td><td>17</td><td>+</td><td></td><td>None</td><td>1: SE</td></tr><tr><td>Ashcombe: Castle Dyke</td><td>18</td><td>+</td><td></td><td>None</td><td>1: NE</td></tr><tr><td>Stockleigh Pomeroy: Raddon</td><td>19</td><td>+</td><td></td><td>None</td><td>?</td></tr></tbody></table>

Note: For locations see Figure 9.7.

excavation. Belbury Castle and High Peak are almost totally destroyed through demolition and coastal erosion respectively. Limited excavations at the latter have recovered no Iron Age finds from the surviving fragment of the earthwork and its interior (Pollard 1966; Rainbird et al. 2013); nevertheless it may also be of Iron Age date and so is included in this analysis.

The rest survive as reasonably well-preserved extant monuments in the landscape. Of these 19 monuments only 2 occur on the
<table><caption>Table 9.5 East Devon hillforts: outworks, elaborated entrances, rampart dimensions and long axis of interiors.</caption><thead><tr><th>Name</th><th>Site number</th><th>Outworks</th><th>Elaborated entrances</th><th>Ramparts</th><th>Long axis of interior</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Branscombe: Berry Castle</td><td>1</td><td>No</td><td>No</td><td>Slight</td><td>W-E</td></tr><tr><td>Otterton: High Peak</td><td>2</td><td>No</td><td>No</td><td>Slight</td><td>N-S?</td></tr><tr><td>Axmouth: Hawkesdown Hill</td><td>3</td><td>Yes</td><td>No</td><td>Slight</td><td>W-E</td></tr><tr><td>Cadbury: Cadbury Castle</td><td>4</td><td>No</td><td>No</td><td>Strong</td><td>W-E</td></tr><tr><td>Luppitt: Dumpdon</td><td>5</td><td>No</td><td>Yes</td><td>Slight</td><td>N-S</td></tr><tr><td>Membury: Membury Castle</td><td>6</td><td>No</td><td>Yes</td><td>Slight</td><td>N-S</td></tr><tr><td>Musbury: Musbury Castle</td><td>7</td><td>No</td><td>Yes</td><td>Strong</td><td>NE-SW</td></tr><tr><td>Ottery St Mary: Belbury Castle</td><td>8</td><td>No</td><td>No</td><td>Slight</td><td>N-S</td></tr><tr><td>Payhembury: Hembury Fort</td><td>9</td><td>No</td><td>Yes</td><td>Massive</td><td>N-S</td></tr><tr><td>Sidbury: Sidbury Castle</td><td>10</td><td>No</td><td>Yes</td><td>Strong</td><td>NW-SE</td></tr><tr><td>Stockland: Great Castle</td><td>11</td><td>No</td><td>No</td><td>Strong</td><td>N-S</td></tr><tr><td>Stockland: Little Castle</td><td>12</td><td>No</td><td>No</td><td>Slight</td><td>Circular</td></tr><tr><td>Woodbury: Woodbury Castle</td><td>13</td><td>Yes</td><td>Yes</td><td>Massive</td><td>N-S</td></tr><tr><td>Chudleigh: Castle Dyke</td><td>14</td><td>Yes</td><td>No</td><td>Strong</td><td>NE-SW</td></tr><tr><td>Killerton Park: Dolbury</td><td>15</td><td>No</td><td>No</td><td>Slight</td><td>W-E</td></tr><tr><td>Southleigh: Blackburn Castle</td><td>16</td><td>No</td><td>Yes</td><td>Strong</td><td>W-E</td></tr><tr><td>Exeter: Stoke Hill</td><td>17</td><td>No</td><td>No</td><td>Slight</td><td>NE-SW</td></tr><tr><td>Ashcombe: Castle Dyke</td><td>18</td><td>No</td><td>No</td><td>Slight</td><td>Circular</td></tr><tr><td>Stockleigh Pomeroy: Raddon</td><td>19</td><td>No</td><td>?</td><td>Slight</td><td>W-E</td></tr></tbody></table>

Note: For locations see Figure 9.7.
heathlands: Woodbury Castle and Belbury Castle. The rest are found to the west, south, north and east and are situated on hills with a very different geology: chert, greensand and sandstone. Broadly the overall distribution is riverine, with five monuments being located along the river Axe and its tributaries, four along the river Otter and streams flowing into it and a further five, including Woodbury Castle, near to the river Exe and its tributaries.

The Axe has long been regarded as being the eastern ethnic boundary of the Dumnonii, bordering the territory of the Durotriges of Dorset to the east. These sites form a fairly coherent geographical group. From Membury on the eastern edge the nearest hillfort is Pilsdon Pen, 12 km distant to the east (visible from Musbury). To the north the nearest hillfort from Cadbury is Cranmore Castle, nearly 8 km distant; to the south Milber Down is 8 km from Castle Dyke, Ashcombe and to the west Cotley Castle is 9 km from Stoke Hill. Beyond these more isolated sites the next major concentrations of hillforts are found on the fringes of Dartmoor some 20 km to the west, along the margins of Exmoor 20 km to the north and in south Dorset 40 km to the east (Fox 1996; Riley and Wilson North 2001; Cunliffe 1995; Sharples 1991).

The heights of the hills chosen vary considerably, from Belbury Castle situated only 115 m above sea level to the highest, Dumpdon Hill, at 261 m (Table 9.1). Seven occur on the very highest hills, over 200 m high, the rest (63 per cent) on hills between 100 m and 200 m high. Figure 9.7 shows the intervisibility between the hillforts and enclosures. Woodbury Castle, despite it being situated on one of the lower hills, is intervisible with a greater number of these places than any other, seven in total. Five hillforts are visible from Hembury, Raddon and Stoke Canon, the first two of which have considerably higher elevations. Woodbury is thus in a perfect location as regards inter-site visibility. From five of the hillforts no others are visible, from the rest between two and four other sites (Table 9.1; Figure 9.2). Despite the fact that some hillforts, such as Cadbury, are located quite far inland, the sea, on a clear day, it is visible from all but five of them (Table 9.2).

Being located on hilltops the views out from these places across the surrounding landscape might be thought to be of considerable importance. However, there are panoramic views out across the landscape for about the same distance in all directions from only six of these locations. For the rest views out are limited in one or more directions by surrounding hills and ridges. The most extensive views are usually to the south and the coast or towards the east (Table 9.2). Woodbury Castle differs
<figure><img src="image_144.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 9.8** Sketch of the topographic locations of the hillforts and enclosures (Source: author)</figcaption></figure>

from this general trend, having the most extensive views to the west,
with Dartmoor visible in the distance, and towards Exmoor to the north.

The local topography of these places differs considerably. Six different
types of locations were chosen. Two (Stockland Great Castle and Stockland
Little Castle) are situated on gently sloping land beneath ridge tops. Two
others (Berry Castle and High Peak) are situated on cliff tops, with one side
being bounded by the sea. Woodbury Castle is unique in being located along
the steep escarpment edge of the Pebblebed heathlands on its western side.
Nine hillforts (47 per cent) are located on hill 'islands' where the land drops
away more or less steeply on all sides. Three are on the ends of spurs with
the land dropping away steeply on three sides and two are situated in the
middle of flat ridge tops (Table 9.1; Figure 9.8 and Figure 9.9). So in almost
half the cases distinctive and topographically well-defined hills with slopes
on all sides were preferentially chosen and it was these hill 'islands' that
were preferentially chosen as opposed to spur ends or ridge top locations.

The hillforts differ considerably in terms of both size and shape
(Figure 9.10; Table 9.3). A basic distinction can be drawn between those
hillforts and enclosures that have a mimetic relationship to the land, fol-
lowing or replicating the contours of the hill, and those that are super-
imposed without any such clear relationship. Others may follow the hill
contours on one or more sides but not others. This accounts in part for
differences in both the internal area enclosed and the overall shape of
the hillfort or enclosure (see Table 9.3). The ramparts at Sidbury Castle
clearly follow the contours of the hill on all sides, as do those at Stoke
Canon and Membury. They run along natural breaks of the hillslope where
either the slope drops away either very steeply or there is a significant
<figure><img src="image_145.png" /><figcaption>Figure 9.9 Hawkesdown Hill from the west (Source: author)</figcaption></figure>

<figure><img src="image_146.png" /><figcaption>Figure 9.10 The shapes of the East Devon hillforts (Source: author)</figcaption></figure>
dip or change in character of the hill slope. At Sidbury this is the case on all sides of the enclosure, and for Membury too. At Stoke Canon it is most significant and pronounced on the northern side. Other enclosures such as Berry Castle, Branscombe are clearly imposed landscape features. The rampart and ditch does not follow any natural break of slope to the west, north and east, with the enclosed area being terminated to the south by sea cliffs. Similarly the ramparts of Blackbury Castle are set well back from the steep slopes of the ridge top to both the south and the north, with those at the western and eastern ends crossing it. In both these cases the area enclosed might have been considerably larger or smaller. The same is true for the positioning of the ramparts at Cadbury Castle, Castle Dyke, Ashcombe and Stockland Little Castle and Great Castle.

Other hillfort ramparts both mimetically follow the hill contours and are imposed to a greater or lesser extent (see Table 9.1). The ramparts of the spur-end hillforts, Hawkesdown Hill and Hembury, follow the contours of the steepest break of slope on all but one side where the ramparts cut off the spur. At Dumpdon the ramparts follow the steepest break in slope except at the northern end where they cut across a point where the slope is relatively slight. Musbury is interesting in that it has a large rampart and ditch cutting off the far southern end of the spur on which it is situated, whereas normally one would expect the steep hill slopes to be followed (Figure 9.11). This unusual feature may relate to the provision of an entrance at this point. At Belbury the ramparts artificially cut across the hill slope on the eastern side. At Chudleigh Castle and Woodbury the ramparts only follow a steep break of slope on one side, but are imposed on the other sides of the enclosure, the interior of which might have been either larger or smaller.

These monuments vary significantly in size, with the area being enclosed varying from 0.6 ha to 4 ha. The largest are Stockland Great Castle and Sidbury Castle (Table 9.3). The spacious interiors were capable of physically enclosing and expressing the identities of the local communities that constructed them, expressions of their solidarity and territorial control of the surrounding landscape. Woodbury Castle, enclosing an area of 2 ha, is of medium size. It also has the most distinctive and unusual shape, which I have argued is a result of its two-stage construction and considerable enlargement. Other hillforts, such as Dolbury in Killerton Park, that were significantly enlarged maintain a more uniform and regular shape and clearly this was related to the contours of the hill to a greater or lesser extent in those cases.
<figure><img src="image_147.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 9.11** Plan of Musbury (Source: author)</figcaption></figure>

The interiors of seven of them are almost flat or only gently sloping and it is possible to see across the entire hillfort interior from any point (Figure 9.12). These include those sites that are superimposed on the landscape and Woodbury Castle, whose ramparts are imposed on the land except on the western side. For the majority of them it is not possible to see from one side to the other across the hillfort interior because the land either slopes markedly in one direction or rises up towards the centre, creating a domed interior. This is the case for most of the hill 'island' enclosures in which the ramparts are slung at a lower point round the hill and all three spur-end enclosures (Table 9.3). In a few cases such as Cadbury, Stoke Canon and Chudleigh it is possible to see across the entire enclosure from the highest central point but not from elsewhere (Figure 9.13).

The fact that the land is often significantly higher in the hillfort means that it would be possible to see out across the landscape over the tops of the ramparts even if they possessed a crowning palisade fence in one or most directions. At Hembury only views to the north would be blocked by the massive ramparts cutting off the spur on which it
<figure><img src="image_148.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 9.12** Looking east across the interior of Blackbury Castle
(Source: author)</figcaption></figure>

<figure><img src="image_149.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 9.13** Looking south across part of the interior of Cadbury Castle (Source: author)</figcaption></figure>
was built. At Hawkesdown Hill the view to the east would be blocked, at Musbury that to the northeast, at Stockland Great Castle that to the north. Blackburn Castle is unusual in that, being sited on flat land with high ramparts, views out would be blocked in all directions. At Woodbury Castle the view out from the interior would similarly be blocked, except possibly to the west from the northern part of the monument, as already noted. Clearly, while it was important to site most of these enclosures so that it was possible to see out across the landscape, internal visibility across the enclosure was usually a secondary consideration in hillfort use and design.

## Entrances, ramparts, outworks

In southeast England and Wessex most of the orientations of hillfort entrances are towards the west and east (Hamilton and Manley 2001: 12; Hill 1996). In contrast the entrances to the hillforts in East Devon face in a wide variety of directions: to the north, south, east and west and almost all the points of the compass in between (Table 9.4). There appear to be no coherent design rules at stake in relation to sunrise and sunset directions, as has been claimed elsewhere in relation to Iron Age house doorway orientations (Parker Pearson 1996). Five of them appear to have had two original entrances, the remainder only one. Access to the interiors through these entrances was in most cases relatively easy because they are sited on either flat or gently sloping ground. At only five of them, Dumpdon, Musbury, Membury, Sidbury and Hembury, are the entrance or entrances sited on a steep slope requiring a considerable and arduous climb. Even in these cases access was afforded by a diagonal rather than vertical climb up the hill slope and could have been made considerably more difficult.

At Musbury there was easy access into the enclosure across the top of the spur on which it is sited from the NE and a more difficult SW entrance. Only six hillforts have entrances with a marked or exaggerated elaboration of the ramparts extending out down the hillslope and restricting passage to a narrow corridor and/or being inturned or extending into the hillfort interior: Dumpdon, Membury, Musbury, Hembury, Sidbury and Blackburn (Table 9.5).

At Blackburn excavations have demonstrated the presence of inner and outer gates at either end of an embanked passageway 60 m long (Figure 9.16). The passage through the entrance was covered with a spread of fine gravel, probably taken from the stream bed in the valley to
the south of the enclosure (Young and Richardson 1955: 49). At a later
date triangular ramparts and ditches were added to create a striking geo-
metric outwork without any parallel in southwest England. The closest
resemblance to it is in an early phase of Maiden Castle, Dorset (Young
and Richardson 1953: 50ff.; Wheeler 1943: 33).

At Sidbury the interior is entered from a steep embanked passage-
way 50 m long, possibly with gates at either end (Figure 9.14; Figure
9.16). At Dumpdon the entrance is embanked and inturned, with the
inner and outer ramparts being inturned and constructed 30 m into
the interior thus creating a restricted passageway (Figure 9.15; Figure
9.16) (Fox 1996). At Membury the northeast entrance has been much
disturbed but may have originally defined an oblique and curving nar-
row corridor into the interior. At Musbury entry from the northeast
side was through a narrow corridor passing through two ramparts and
ditches set one behind the other 40 m apart. At Hembury approach to
the western entrance involved passing diagonally through the outer
ramparts along a sunken track. A low bank on either side shut off the
ditch ends, which were surmounted by a palisade fence (Todd 1984).
These elaborated entrances were designed to constrict passage and
block any view into the interiors of the enclosures. At other sites the

<figure><img src="image_150.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 9.14** The entrance to Sidbury Castle (Source: author)</figcaption></figure>
<figure><img src="image_151.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 9.15** Dumpdon: view out from entrance (Source: author)</figcaption></figure>

<figure><img src="image_152.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 9.16** Complex hillfort entrances (Source: author)</figcaption></figure>

entrances appear to be little more than breaks in the enclosing banks with little elaboration.

The usual inference is that these complex entrance ways were defensive structures. The alternative view, proposed here, is that they elaborated passage from the outside to the inside of the enclosures and were thus symbolically significant in the transition being made
from the domain of everyday life to another, sacred domain associated
with ceremonial and ritual within the hillfort interiors. In other words
these entrances marked a rite of passage and elaborated a liminal space
between the inside and the outside.

The enclosures are defined at most sites with a single rampart and ditch and usually a counterscarp bank. In most cases the hillslope itself was scarped or steepened as part of the process of construction, requiring considerably less labour than digging a ditch and throwing up the material to form a rampart. At six hillforts there are multiple ramparts at one end of the enclosure: Hawkesdown Hill, Dumpdon, Musbury, Blackburn, Woodbury and Hembury. Recent excavations have also suggested that High Peak may have been bivallate (Rainbird et al. 2013).

Of these Hembury has by far the most massive ramparts and is the
only true multivallate hillfort (Table 9.4; Figure 9.17). At Blackburn these
form part of the unusual entrance elaboration to the south. At the other
sites including Hembury the multiple ramparts occur where the hillslope
is gentlest. Woodbury is an interesting exception to this principle. Here
the multiple ramparts occur at the northwestern end of the enclosure
where the external hill slopes are steepest. The ramparts and ditches
at Hembury are by far the most impressive and elaborated, followed by

<figure><img src="image_153.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 9.17** The massive Hembury ramparts (Source: author)</figcaption></figure>
those at Woodbury. The ramparts and ditches at 11 sites, even allowing
for subsequent removal of material and destruction, are relatively slight
in comparison (Table 9.5). At Membury, Sidbury and Cadbury soil quar-
ries are visible along the inside of the ramparts, where material was
scraped up to form the bank.

At Hembury the Earlier Iron Age ramparts were box ramparts. They
were faced and revetted at the back by timber walls set in trenches. The
width of these ramparts was 6 m and they were composed of sand, earth
and stone derived from an external ditch. Todd (1984) estimates the
date of construction to have been between 600 and 450 BC. The original
structure was completely replaced by multiple ramparts of more complex
construction in size and number sometime after 300 BC. Here an original
box rampart with timber revetments was replaced with glacis or dump
ramparts 9 m wide and 5 m high revetted with a low stone wall at the
front (Todd 1984). Since the rampart was on the very edge of the scarp
slope its vertical height above the ditch bottom was a massive 18 m.

Hembury and Raddon are the only known hillforts in East Devon
where a timber-framed box rampart is known (Todd 1984; Gent and
Quinnell 1999), as opposed to dump or glacis-style ramparts that are
everywhere generally later in date (Cunliffe 1991). Excavations at
Blackbury Castle showed the rampart to have been of dump construction
and built of clay and flint nodules over a small turf marking-out bank
probably dating to the fifth or fourth century BC (Young and Richardson
1955: 48). It has been argued that some hillforts, such as Dumpdon, may
never have been completed. Todd's excavations at the southern end of
Dumpdon showed that the Iron Age rampart here consisted largely of
chert blocks heaped up to form a wall 2.15 m wide. There was no evi-
dence for revetment or careful construction and the rampart was only
0.4 m high. Along the western side of the enclosure the rampart becomes
indistinct, in places appearing as a series of dumps (Todd 1992). The
ramparts at Dumpdon, which Todd suggests were unfinished, may never
have been intended to be high or carefully built in the form of a wall since
the hill slope is so steep at all but the northern end. The notion that some
hillforts were uncompleted has become something of a mantra in the
literature. Another way of putting it is that many were being continu-
ally constructed and reconstructed: they were all in this sense unfinished
works and continuous building sites while in use. The primary purpose of
the more prominent of these earthworks may have been to sculpt the hill
and make it into a highly visible landscape marker. Such a situation exists
at a number of other sites in areas of the enclosures where the slopes of
the hill are precipitous: Membury, Musbury, Hawkesdown Hill.
At least three – Hawkesdown Hill; Castle Dyke, Chudleigh; and Woodbury – have associated outworks (Table 9.5). At Hawkesdown Hill a bank lies 100 m to the east of the main enclosure crossing the top of the spur. At Castle Dyke, Chudleigh part of a single bank and ditch survives 500 m to the south of the main enclosure. This runs down-slope, crossing the contours to the Ugbrooke stream. Woodbury Castle is unique with its Wessex-type cross-dyke to the north.

## Enclosures, chronology and the Iron Age

Excavations have demonstrated that at Hembury, High Peak and Raddon the hillforts occupied sites of Neolithic causewayed enclosures. At Hembury a Neolithic feature that might be a ditch terminal indicates much earlier occupation of the hill (Tingle 1995). This suggests that many if not all these locations were chosen because they already had meaning and significance in the landscape. However, none of these enclosures include Bronze Age barrows or cairns in their interior. The distribution of these two very different monuments seems to be genuinely mutually exclusive. Two large cairns do occur a short distance to the north of Woodbury Castle along the western scarp edge of the Pebblebed heathlands. Five very small flint cairns are known in the vicinity of Berry Castle, Branscombe, to the west and the east of the enclosure. Otherwise Bronze Age barrows are conspicuously absent from these hilltop locations crowned by forts and enclosures.

At Raddon two phases of first-millennium BC enclosures have been distinguished. The earliest phase may have been a simple palisaded enclosure enclosing about 1 ha, dated to 810–410 cal. BC, on the top of the hill (Gent and Quinnell 1999: 66). This is in accordance with the evidence from Woodbury Castle discussed above for a palisaded enclosure pre-dating the construction of the hillfort. Such an early palisaded enclosure may also be indicated at Hembury (Liddell 1936). Subsequently at Raddon an enclosure with a box rampart was constructed, with a similar appended enclosure to the west (Gent and Quinnell 1999: 68). The site appears to have continued in use from the fifth to the second centuries BC, although the early box ramparts, once they collapsed, do not seem to have been remodelled and replaced with dump ramparts. So ‘defence’ of this location was no longer considered necessary.

There is much uncertainty with regard to the length of occupation of these places because of limited excavation. Some sites such as Hembury may have not been used for long periods and others such as
Woodbury appear to have been abandoned long before the Roman con-
quest (Miles 1975: 207). The excavations at Blackbury Castle produced
no finds later than the Iron Age. Almost all the East Devon hillforts and
enclosures thus appear to have fallen out of regular use before or after
the Roman conquest (Grant 1995). A short phase of Roman military
occupation, however, took place in the northern part of Hembury around
AD 50–70 (Todd 1984). Here substantial timber buildings were erected,
including a courtyard building and a narrow block, possibly a barrack.
The excavation evidence did not suggest any evidence of a Roman attack
and construction seems to have taken place on a site long abandoned.
Both of the Iron Age gates into the hillfort were remodelled. Roman
occupation is known at Stoke Hill, Exeter from the later third century AD
(Radford 1937). At Cadbury antiquarian excavations in the nineteenth
century found a 17-m-deep shaft with Roman artefacts of the third and
fourth centuries AD in the fill (Fox 1952b).

The only evidence of some form of post-Roman occupation comes
from Raddon and High Peak. At Raddon there was no evidence for any
activity during the Roman period but two radiocarbon dates may indi-
cate use of the area during the fourth to seventh centuries AD (Gent and
Quinnell 1999: 70). Excavations at High Peak recovered imported pot-
tery of late fifth to sixth century AD date (Pollard 1966).

Hillforts have traditionally been argued to be heavily defended
defensive sites (e.g. Wall 1906; Fox 1996; Cunliffe 2005). This view of
the primary reason for their construction has been strongly challenged
in recent years (e.g. Bowden and McOmish 1987; Hill 1996; Hamilton
and Manley 2011). Alternatively, they have been understood variously
as places of permanent settlement or temporary refuge, central places
in the landscape serving a local community for grain storage (Williams
2003), as agricultural stockades (Todd 1987), meeting points for social
territories defined by linear ditches (Bradley, Entwhistle and Raymond
1994; Bowden 2005); centres for specialist production and for trade and
exchange (Cunliffe 1991) or as ritual and ceremonial sites with struc-
tured deposition of artefacts associated with shrines (Hill 1996; Bradley
2005: 165ff.). Excavation of the hillfort interiors in East Devon has been
too limited to establish if any of these possibilities might be the case
(Griffith and Quinnell 1999a).

The huge amounts of labour required to construct these enclosures has
been linked to the development of social hierarchies and political centrali-
zation in Wessex and southeast England (Cunliffe 2005) but such a model
seems inappropriate for the southwest of England, as Cunliffe acknowl-
edges. Todd suggests that ‘in the fragmented south-western landscape ...
there was so little conducement to political centralization or even associa-
tion. The overall picture of later prehistoric settlement is one of a multitude
of small fiefdoms, of which the hill-forts were the centres of power and the
hill-top enclosures the main repositories of wealth' (Todd 1987: 167). There
was no coinage, and important central places such as oppida, known in east-
ern England in the Later Iron Age, simply did not develop.

Overall there is little evidence at present of any intensive or per-
manent occupation of these enclosures. The complete lack of any evi-
dence from the interior of Dumpdon led Todd to suggest that it was never
occupied, but as he himself noted it is dangerous to infer from negative
evidence of very limited excavation trenches (Todd 1992). Limited trial
trenching of the interior of Blackbury Castle to the west and east of the
south entrance revealed the presence of a possible hut 26 yards to the
west of the entrance. Fifteen stone-edged post holes were discovered
and three irregular gulleys to the west of them. Postholes indicate that
these may have been palisade trenches. Another trench was found to the
southeast of the main cluster of post holes. Other features of this struc-
ture were an area of stoneless clay, possibly an earth oven, and a fire pit

<figure><img src="image_154.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 9.18** The structure at Blackbury Castle (after Young and Richardson 1955)</figcaption></figure>
containing pot sherds and a lump of iron slag (Figure 9.18) (Young and Richardson 1955: 52–3).

In the southwest of England the traditional house structure from the Bronze Age onwards was the round house, which persisted well into the Iron Age. Inside the interior of Blackbury Castle a possible rectilinear structure was discovered and post holes may indicate similar structures at Woodbury. These might possibly be understood as shrines rather than domestic or ‘functional’ structures. Shrines in hillfort interiors are well documented at Danebury in Hampshire and South Cadbury in Somerset (Cunliffe 2005).

Young and Richardson suggest that Blackbury Castle had little defen-
sive significance and was not a habitation site. They argue that it was prob-
ably an agricultural stockade (Young and Richardson 1955: 57). No large
storage pits were found at Hembury or Blackbury Castle in the excavated
areas of the interior. A large area near the northern end of the Hembury
enclosure contained no evidence of structures or other features through-
out the construction and use of the hillfort. No storage pits have been found
and no groups of four or five post-hole structures linked to raised granaries
and grain storage at sites such as Danebury in Hampshire (Cunliffe 1991).

Some authors have argued that stock raising was the most impor-
tant occupation in the southwest, hence the lack of granary structures
(Todd 1987). Fox recognized another type of enclosure in southwest
England and south Wales, generally small in size and sited on hill slopes
and sometimes on flat ground defined by roughly circular or sub-rectan-
gular earthworks and sometimes widely spaced outworks (Fox 1952a).
She noted that these often occur near to water sources and suggested that
they formed part of a stock-raising economy and were intended to corral
and herd cattle during the winter months. This clearly influenced Young
and Richardson's (1955) interpretation of Blackbury Castle. Other enclo-
sures in East Devon - Castle Dyke, Chudleigh, 'Stockland Great and Little
Castle; Berry Castle, Branscombe and Castle Dyke, Ashcombe - could be
understood in this manner. However, with the exception of Stockland
Little Castle, Castle Dyke, Ashcombe and Berry Castle, the ramparts are
so massive and required such a huge labour investment that it seems
unlikely they were built simply to house stock, although this may have
formed part of the reason for their construction in an economy in which
cattle were of central economic and social significance: signifiers of the
wealth, importance and prosperity of the local social group and linked to
their identity.

Some enclosures elsewhere in southern England provide evidence
of specialized craft production such as the working of iron and glass.
Excavations at Blackbury Castle discovered iron slag (also discovered at Hembury), whetstones and spindle whorls, indicating a range of craft activities. Iron slag was also found at Raddon (Gent and Quinnell 1999: 67) and Stoke Hill (Radford 1937).

## The significance of pebbles

While pebbles were carefully chosen and selected to build the comparatively small Bronze Age cairns on the Pebblebed heathlands, they appear to be of no significance whatsoever in this respect for the construction of the massive monument of Woodbury Castle during the Iron Age. Here they did just provide huge quantities of locally available building material worked up to form the ramparts.

The widespread presence of beach pebbles on hillforts in south-east England and in Wessex has always traditionally been interpreted as sling stones, direct evidence for warfare and the use of hillforts for defensive purposes. The argument is tautologous: pebbles are understood as sling stones because it is assumed that hillforts were primarily defensive enclosures where slings would be used (Cunliffe 1991: 489; Sharples 1991). Beside the rectilinear structure excavated at Blackbury Castle an oval stone-lined pit was discovered containing a hoard of 25 pebbles. In all, 1,271 pebbles were recorded, many from the entrance area, some from the body of the main rampart (where they would not be accessible for use as sling stones) and others from the trial trenches dug in the interior.

Discrete hoards of up to 40 and 50 pebbles were found at Hembury (Liddell 1930: 47). Liddell notes that these are quartzite pebbles from the Pebblebeds and that they were of a uniform size averaging about 50 g in weight. One small 'nest' of these pebbles was discovered consisting of ten carefully chosen pebbles weighing less than 25 g. (Liddell 1930: 47). Liddell collected 1,188 of these pebbles during the 1930 season; these were found in the hillfort interior. They were deposited in the area crossed by transverse banks in the centre. None were found in or under the Iron Age ramparts (Liddell 1930: 47). Unfortunately, most were reburied in a post hole at the end of the excavations and so cannot be examined. During the second season of the excavations 637 pebbles were recovered in the same general area. They were found in Iron Age rather than Neolithic contexts in pits, post holes and as 'hoards' (Liddell 1931: 95). A further 624 pebbles were found in the 1932 season, including a hoard of 77 pebbles. These were again associated with Iron Age rather
than Neolithic contexts (Liddell 1932: 179). These may well be deliberate structural depositions but we know too little about the find contexts.

Pebbles have been recorded from a number of other East Devon hillforts: High Peak (Kirwan 1870b: 650), Stockland Great Castle, Sidbury Castle and Hawkesdown Hill (Hutchinson 1862: 375–6, 378). At Sidbury Castle Hutchinson reports ‘in digging against the outside slope of the inner agger [at the southwestern entrance end] they [labourers] came upon a sort of cavern which was packed full of round pebbles; there may have been as many as would fill one or two wheelbarrows’ (376). Only six of these are preserved in the local museum at Sidmouth. They are very small oval pebbles (about 3 cm long) derived from the local beach and unlikely to do much harm to anybody attacking the place if used in a sling, unless they were hit in the eye! While pebbles provided ready-to-hand material for building the ramparts of Woodbury Castle those pebbles found elsewhere and off the heathlands might be understood as structural depositions that could have had a quite different aesthetic and symbolic significance. Unfortunately, it is not possible to investigate this further as the find material has not been kept.

## Conclusions

From this landscape study and general review of the excavation and survey evidence it becomes apparent just how different Woodbury Castle is from other Iron Age hillforts and enclosures in East Devon. The main points can be summarized as follows:

1. Its unique pebble construction in a heathland landscape;

2. its unique scarp-edge location;

3. its highly unusual and distinctive shape;

4. that it is intervisible with more hillforts than any other within East Devon;

5. the extensive views to the west as far as Dartmoor and to the north as far as Exmoor;

6. its associated ‘Wessex-type’ dyke or outwork to the north;

7. the construction of multiple ramparts on the northwestern end where the hill slope is steepest. The reverse is the case for the other enclosures with multiple ramparts.

Woodbury Castle was a relatively late addition to the Pebblebed landscape. It is anomalous and atypical compared to other hillforts in the
area. We could describe the first phase as a modest attempt which was
then enlarged in an unusual way, possibly part of a process of competi-
tive emulation with social groups undertaking hillfort construction else-
where in East Devon.

In hillfort studies secondary and primary reasons for their con-
struction, use and significance have frequently been confused. What was
of secondary importance, for example defence, settlement, acting as rit-
ual and ceremonial centres, central places for exchange, etc., has been
taken as being primary. It has been argued above that these enclosures
are best understood as being massive monuments indelibly marking the
landscape and defining the hills they enclosed in various ways. Many
of them were designed primarily to impress as massive features, part
and parcel of the landscape itself, visible for miles around (Hamilton
and Manley 2001: 10–11). They provided places from which the sur-
rounding landscape could be viewed and places to view from the sur-
rounding landscape, that indelibly marked that landscape and visually
redefined and gave a new identity to it. They might enclose only a small
area of a hill or a spur, but this act of enclosing the land was not signifi-
cant in terms of the area enclosed, larger or smaller as the case might be.
The point was that this act of enclosure should be visually dominant in
the Iron Age landscape. The hillforts were therefore signatures of local
group identity in place.

In the far more heavily wooded lowland landscape of the Iron Age
past these hilltops, cleared of trees, with their massive encircling banks
and ditches, would have been far more visually dominant than they are
today. We often see prehistory in the ‘negative’ since these locations are
now typically crowned with trees, their banks and ditches concealed.
Some of the locations chosen, those with a greater visual ‘reach’, such as
Woodbury Castle, were clearly more successful in dominating the land-
scape than others. These are by far the largest monumental constructions
in British prehistory, collective expressions of the power of local social
groups to shape, control and dominate their surroundings and lay claim
to it by signing the land.
<figure><img src="image_155.png" /></figure>
## Part II

### The heathlands in modernity
<figure><img src="image_156.png" /></figure>
Landscaping the heathlands

This chapter considers the impact of the Bicton estate on the Pebblebed heathlands during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The estate consisted of a grand house surrounded by parkland and landscape gardens set on the eastern edge of the Pebblebed heathlands, across which one had to travel from Exeter, the nearest settlement of any size, to reach it. In the mid-sixteenth century Bicton was sold to Sir Robert Dennys, who demolished the medieval manor house and built a Tudor mansion and enclosed a deer park to its south. This marks the beginning of the modern Bicton estate, which then moved by inheritance and marriage to the Rolle family.

Through time the Rolle family acquired or married into more and more land until they were among the wealthiest landowners in England in the nineteenth century, and were once lords of 45 manors. They also controlled landholdings and slave plantations on the Exuma islands in the Bahamas until 1835, when Lord John Rolle gave them up and set the slaves free. The Rolle Estate Act of 1865 and Bateman's *Great Landowners of Britain* published in 1883 record the Devon estate as having 55,592 acres in east and north Devon. This included all of the commons of the Pebblebed heaths, and yielded an annual income of £47,170 (over £2.25 million today) (Ford 2001: 9). An agricultural labourer's wage at that time was around 7 shillings a week or about £18 a year (Vancouver [1808] 1969: 361). This extraordinary wealth naturally allowed the Rolles to spend lavishly on the estate and entertain influential guests. Louden notes that the house, 'which is well placed on a knoll, is extensive and commodious, containing a suite of magnificent apartments on the principal floor, and very extensive offices' (Louden 1842: 552). It was Lord John Rolle and his second wife, Louisa, whom he married in 1822
when he was 66 and she was 28, who had the major influence on the
development of the estate, gardens and heathlands from 1820 until 1885,
the year Lady Rolle, the richest woman in Devon, died. An American trav-
eller, Elihu Burrit, wrote of Lady Rolle, after a visit to Bicton in 1864:

[T]his lady is a remarkable woman without equal or like in England
.... She is a female rival of Alexander the Great .... It seems to have
been an ambition for nearly half a century to do what was never
done before by man or woman, in filling her great park and gardens
with a collection of trees and shrubs that should be to them what
the British Museum is to the relics of antiquity and the literature
of all ages. And whoever has travelled in different countries and
climates and visits her arboretum, will admit that she has realized
that ambition to the full.

(cited in Gray 2009: 6)

In the grounds of Bicton House during this period a new ornamental
lake was constructed, along with a shell house to keep a collection of shells
from all over the world, an iron and plate-glass palm house, a new church,
a hermitage, otter pool, orangery, China tower and other ornamental
structures. After Lord Rolle's death in 1842 Lady Rolle continued to live
at Bicton and still had the major influence on the house and its grounds.

Following Lord Rolle's death the Bicton estate passed to Mark Rolle,
then a child, who did not live there until after 1885 and then for only a few
months at a time. He was largely an absentee landlord, investing much of
his energy and time in the Stevenstone estate in north Devon. However,
in relation to Bicton he set about embarking on an extensive building
programme, renovating farms and constructing labourers' cottages, and
was a benefactor of numerous projects, such as a public water supply in
Colaton Raleigh and East Budleigh (see Ford 2001 for a detailed account).

Different areas of the heathlands, which were common land, were
inherited and acquired by the Rolle family from the early seventeenth
century onwards. In tandem with developing and improving the grounds
of Bicton House and its gardens, the wider heathland was also romanti-
cally improved by planting ornamental tree clumps and enclosures and
constructing landscaping mounds in the form of prehistoric barrows dur-
ing the eighteenth and early nineteenth century (Figure 10.1).

The 1758 map of the parish of Bicton shows four circular tree
clumps at Four Firs along the Woodbury to Yettington road, along with
two others: one to the north beside this road, about 200 m to the east of
Four Firs, and another next to the road on its southern side, about 1 km
<figure><img src="image_157.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 10.1** The locations of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century mounds and other landscaping features on the Pebblebed heathlands (Source: author)</figcaption></figure>
to the east. Other ornamental tree-ring enclosures were made on the top of the hill known as Crook's Plantation and on Tidwell Mount. It is doubtful whether any of these were trees planted on landscaping mounds. This was a later early nineteenth-century development. The tithe map of Bicton parish of 1838 shows clearly some of the landscaping mounds and other features (Figure 10.1: 1–12) that occur along the Woodbury to Yettington road today, indicating that they were constructed sometime in the early nineteenth century, possibly at the same time as the construction of a new ornamental lake in the grounds of Bicton House, from which the material to create them might have been obtained.

During the early to mid-nineteenth century another landscaping mound was constructed on the top of a hill to the southeast of the church (Figure 10.1: 17; Figure 10.2); it is prominent from the top of the early formal Italian gardens (first made around 1735), although it is not shown on the 1840 tithe map, unlike some of the others. Two prehistoric barrows were enhanced with surrounding ditches and planted with Scots pines to the north of Woodbury Castle (Figure 10.1: 15–16), and another square enclosure was planted with trees in a prominent position 500 m to the east of them. Two further massive landscaping mounds were constructed on the western scarp edge of the heathlands to the south of Black

<figure><img src="image_158.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 10.2** Landscaping/tree mound 17 seen from the orangery at Bicton Gardens (Source: author)</figcaption></figure>
<figure><img src="image_159.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 10.3** Massive landscaping mound adjacent to the B3180 road to the south of Woodbury Castle, located on the western scarp edge of the heathlands (Fig. 10.1: 13) (Source: author)</figcaption></figure>

Hill (Figure 10.1: 13–14; Figure 10.3). The prominent prehistoric summit barrows on the top of Aylesbeare Common to the north of the heathlands were landscaped by planting Scots pines on top of them as well (see Chapter 7). The romantic temperament of the times regarded certain trees as especially appropriate for landscaping follies and ruins and the top choice was Scots pines (Jones 1974: 4). Four circular or oval tree enclosures shown on the 1838 tithe map were made at Frying Pans and three at the road junction known as Tucker’s Plants along the Lympstone to Yettington road. There are three others of probable later date on the northern part of Colaton Raleigh Common. Two pairs of square tree plantations to the east of Four Firs and another two further to the east further enhanced the Woodbury to Yettington road shown on the 1838 tithe map (Figure 10.1). The top of Black Hill also had an embanked ornamental polygonal feature (now destroyed on one side by the construction of a reservoir) set in woodland with radiating drives.

A nineteenth-century carriage drive along the heathlands, following its western scarp and then going east across them to the grounds of Bicton house, would have entailed encountering and passing through a whole array of different prehistoric cairns and modern landscaping
barrows, a cross-ridge dyke and entering and exiting the interior of Woodbury Castle hillfort. A clear effort was made to duplicate the landscape situations of the prehistoric cairns on the western scarp edge of the heathlands and in particular their solitary and asymmetrical locations in the landscape. An entirely different formal arrangement of multiple modern 'barrows' is encountered along the Woodbury to Yettington road.

At Four Firs four landscaping mounds are symmetrically arranged around a crossroads (Figure 1.10: 1–4). This is the beginning of a series of such mounds positioned along either side of the road running east towards Yettington. This was the main carriage drive to Bicton House and park from Exeter that the Rolle family and their numerous visitors would take. The Four Firs mounds are all about 20 m in diameter and about 2.5 m high. All but the northwest mound have surrounding ditches. The northeast and southwest mounds are enclosed by a low bank and external ditch on two sides, running up to and terminating at the two roads forming the crossroads. The northwest mound has a substantial quarry hollow on its north and western sides and the mound here is up to 7 m high above the surrounding ground surface and had a stabilizing revetment of corrugated iron and metal posts (Figure 10.4).

<figure><img src="image_160.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 10.4** The northwest landscaping mound at Four Firs (Fig, 10.1: 1) (Source: author)</figcaption></figure>
FOUR FIRS BARROWS near WOODBURY, DEVON
N.E. MOUND

<figure><img src="image_161.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 10.5** Section through the base of the northeast mound at Four Firs
(Source: author)</figcaption></figure>

A small section which had been cut into the northeast mound at Four Firs by an unknown party was cleaned up, recorded and back filled. The section was approximately 80 cm in length and 80 cm in depth (Figure 10.5). On cleaning it became apparent that the barrow was composed of at least two layers of deposited soil. The lowest layer (context 012) is a reddish-orange colour typical of the ploughsoil of the area surrounding the Pebblebed heathlands region. The natural was not reached, as the remit of the excavation of this scheduled monument was simply to clean up the existing section and record it. However, the natural at Four Firs as elsewhere across the Pebblebed heathlands is grey gritty sand and pebbles. This layer was followed by context 0011, a mid-brown friable soil layer, and by a further reddish-orange soil (context 0010), also interpreted as redeposited ploughsoil. The soil from the original excavation of the hole and from the archaeological excavation was sieved. No finds came from the hole. Notably the composition of the barrow, on the basis of this section, is completely different from the heathland prehistoric cairns which are composed of pebble and turf layers. This provides further confirmation that the mounds at Four Firs are not prehistoric but modern landscaping mounds.
## Experiencing the mounds along the Woodbury to Yettington road

Walking up the steep hill on the road from Exeter, east of Woodbury, marking the western escarpment of the heathlands, the mounds at Four Firs are first visible only from a very short distance away as one reaches the crossroads. Effectively they mark the end of the cultivated farmland on the route from Exeter and the beginning of the uncultivated wilderness of the heathland. All the mounds were originally planted with Scots pines that still grow on them together with an old beech tree on the southeastern mound. Scots pines were clearly chosen to be symbolic of a heathland wilderness and were planted not only on these landscaping mounds but also on the larger and more visible Bronze Age cairns across the heathlands – those that are close to roads such as numbers 15 and 16 on the western scarp edge mentioned above and the summit cairns on Aylesbeare Common. Smaller prehistoric cairns and those situated away from roads were not planted – simply because were insignificant as landscape markers. The whole point of these landscaping mounds was to make a visual impact from carriage drives across the landscape and the trees highlighted their presence.

From Four Firs, Exeter is visible to the northwest but passing beyond the barrows to the east it falls out of sight. This marks the first and last point from which the cathedral city is visible from the heath. The Iron Age hillfort of Woodbury Castle marks the horizon to the north. From an eighteenth-century point of view one enters a pagan realm associated with the deep past and the ancient British – untamed, uncultivated and thoroughly romanticized. The overall ground-plan with four ‘barrows’ arranged around a crossroads with encircling banks and ditches resembles that of the great henge monument of Avebury in Wiltshire, with its crossroads at the centre. Might this have been the inspiration – to create something similar in miniature?

From Four Firs the road dips gently to the east. To the north of it the land rises up, restricting visibility to a few hundred metres, blocking the view to Woodbury Castle. The road is situated towards the bottom of a north-south slope that terminates about 50 m to the south of the road. The land then rises up to Black Hill about 1 km distant, forming the horizon line to the south. Moving east, the Four Firs mounds soon fall out of sight and are marked only by the presence of the trees crowning them. One next passes two square-shaped banked tree enclosures symmetrically placed on either side of the road and almost certainly constructed at the same time as the mounds, adding to the scenic effect.
<figure><img src="image_162.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 10.6** Landscaping mound to the south of the Woodbury to Yettington road (Fig. 10.1: 6) (Source: author)</figcaption></figure>

These are equidistant between the mounds at Four Firs and another pair of landscaping mounds 300 m away to the east (Figure 10.1: 5, 6). These are again symmetrically placed and identical in form. They consist of a central steep-sided mound about 10 m in diameter and 2.5 m high surrounded by a ditch, a berm and encircling bank about 1 m high with an external ditch (Figure 10.6).

The outer banks and the mounds are extremely sharp and well preserved and do not resemble prehistoric barrows in this respect. However, they are very reminiscent of the sometimes exaggerated and stylized visual perspective found in the antiquarian drawings of Stukeley and others in the mid-eighteenth century (Figure 10.7) and the illustrations of Colt Hoare in his *Ancient History of North Wiltshire* published in 1819 (Figure 10.8). It is likely that Hoare's publications were to be found in the extensive library that existed at Bicton House (sold and dispersed without a record of its original contents in 1957) and provided illustrative models for the landscaping mounds. The external encircling ditches of mounds 5 and 6 are only 4 m away from the edge of the modern road. These two elaborate 'barrows' appear to be replicas of Wessex type 'fancy' barrows, most likely bell barrows, and are totally unlike genuine Bronze Age cairns on the Pebblebed heathlands, which are simple bowl-shaped
<figure><img src="image_163.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 10.7** Stukeley's drawing of Bush Barrow near to Stonehenge</figcaption></figure>

<figure><img src="image_164.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 10.8** Illustration of Hackpen Barrow from Colt Hoare's *History of Ancient Wiltshire*</figcaption></figure>

structures mostly lacking external ditches (see Chapter 1). These were
clearly not fancy enough to provide a template for the construction of
the landscaping mounds that seem to be replicas of depictions of those
found primarily on the Wiltshire chalk downlands. We can interpret this
as a form of intellectual aggrandizement of the past in the present: the
inferior local cairns required improvement.

About 100 m distant to the east another pair of square-shaped
tree enclosures occur on either side of the road and after another 150 m
another pair of ‘barrows’ occur on either side of the road (Figure 10.1: 7–8). These have no encircling banks or ditches. The mounds are 18 m in diameter and 1.4 m high. The mound to the south of the road has a particularly exaggerated profile on its down-slope side. The material from which all these landscaping mounds appear to have been constructed is redeposited topsoil brought from the farmlands surrounding the heathlands, red-brown in colour, contrasting with the black peaty heathland soil. They contain very few pebbles in contrast to the genuine Bronze Age heathland cairns.

From these mounds the road now flattens out to the east and clumps of pine trees mark the position of the next ‘barrows’, which are 400 m distant (Figure 1.10: 9, 10). These have no central mounds but consist of encircling banks with external ditches, their centres being planted with Scots pine trees. These resemble prehistoric disc or saucer barrows found in Dorset and Wiltshire.

Beyond this point the road now begins to dip down to the east again and the Otter valley. Its relationship to the surrounding landscape changes significantly. This part of the road is effectively a spur now bounded by deep valleys with coombes to the north and the valley of the Budleigh brook to the south. The views from it are now extensive to the north and south rather than being quite restricted by rising land on either side. The final two earthworks are situated 300 m down the slope, affording the first view of the Otter valley beyond to the east (Figure 10.1: 11, 12). These consist of banks with external ditches duplicating the previous two earthworks – another pair of disc or saucer barrows internally planted with Scots pine trees situated right next to the road. That to the south of the road has a continuous bank and ditch; part of the ditch of that to the north has been lost probably as a result of road widening (Figure 10.9).

These are the last of the landscaping features on this road across the heathlands. It now descends steeply down a slope to Yettington, off the Pebblebed heathlands and into rich farmland. Just beyond the village the western carriage drive to the grand house begins running through verdant parkland with stately spreading oak trees.

By the middle of the eighteenth century England was ‘wrapped in the miasmic folds of the “Gothick” cult. A barrow on a blasted heath became an object of aesthetic satisfaction and intellectual speculation for many’ (Ashbee 1960: 19; Piggott 1968: 146ff.). This was bound up with a new-found romantic appreciation of wild landscapes, almost universally associated with the Druids, and a Rousseauesque notion of the noble savage. The blasted heath found its intellectual counterpart
<figure><img src="image_165.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 10.9** Landscaping mound 12 along the Woodbury to Yettington road (Source: author)</figcaption></figure>

in the sublime park and manicured landscape gardens adjacent to Bicton House.

## Moving a stone circle

The construction of fake prehistoric mounds along roads crossing the heathlands and their further ornamentation with tree enclosures was accompanied by the destruction of the Seven Stones Bronze Age stone circle situated on Mutters Moor at the southern end of the Peak Hill ridge, to the east of the river Otter and 4 km from Bicton House and park, around 1820. The stones were moved to the park, where they may have been re-erected as a garden feature in the area now known as the American gardens. The current location of the moved stones is uncertain. They now may form part of the rockery garden feature next to the shell house. James states that they are to be found 'behind the Shell House, on the path leading to the main entrance drive' (James 1969: 11). Today the entrance to the grotto is flanked on its western side by a row of eight tabular limestone and flint stones, two of which appear to be broken parts of the same stone (Figure 10.10).
<figure><img src="image_166.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 10.10** The possible seven stones of the Seven Stones stone circle on Mutter's Moor next to the shell house in Bicton Gardens (some behind the bench) (Source: author)</figcaption></figure>

This is exactly the same kind of stone that occurs locally on Mutter's Moor, leading to Gibbens's suggestion that these may indeed be the stones (Gibbens 1952: 345). Other English landscape gardens were furnished with small-scale imitations of Stonehenge or Druid circles of standing stones, cromlechs and temples (Jones 1974: 244ff.) but what makes Bicton rather different is the transportation of a pre-existing stone circle to the garden. Where, how and if it was ever first re-erected as a circle somewhere in the gardens remains uncertain. One possibility is that it originally stood in the vicinity of the shell house constructed in 1845 and was removed and lost when that house and the rock garden in front of it were constructed in 1845 with stone material of the same kind derived from quarries at Salcombe, some 8 km distant to the east.

Improving the heathland

The landscaping of the heathland in order to make it aesthetically more interesting in relation to the roads crossing it also went hand in hand
with taking areas of it in and converting it, where possible, into produc-
tive agricultural land. Vancouver reported that in 1808,

upon the wastes of Woodbury, and other commons connected with
it, Lord Rolle has been much in the practise of encouraging the
peasantry to build and make small improvements: the inducing of
the labourers thus to leave the village, and settle upon the borders
of the commons, must be considered by far the most likely means of
promoting the comfort, and improving the morals of these people.
The quantity of land first permitted to be enclosed is about an acre.
This improvement conducted to his Lordship's satisfaction, a fur-
ther enclosure is suffered to be made, to the extent of 3.4 or 5 acres,
and which, in some cases have led to the cottagers obtaining a long
lease of his improvements at a very moderate rent, and with the
further privilege of enclosing more of the waste ... in thus with-
drawing the cottager from his former haunts in the village, the time
that would otherwise be spent at the ale-house, or in frivolous con-
versation with his neighbours, is now employed to the immediate
benefit of himself and his family, and ultimately to the increase of
the national stock.

(Vancouver [1808] 1969: 98)

Thus moral improvement and the agricultural improvement of
the heathlands were deemed to be parts of one and the same process.
Improving the heathland increased the income of the Rolle family. A
small farm was built within the Iron Age hillfort of Woodbury Castle in
the early nineteenth century with enclosed fields to its south. Even gorse
(furze) was being grown as a crop in enclosed fields on the heathlands. In
1808 furze fields of European gorse were being rented for 15–20 shillings
annually per acre. Generally cut after four years of growth, their stems
were burnt for charcoal. Dwarf gorse was valued at 6–8 shillings per acre
and cut for fuel (Vancouver [1808] 1969: 250).

Bermington (1986) has noted two parallel trends that took place in
the eighteenth century in relation to grand estates such as Bicton. In the
eighteenth century there was a drive towards the systematic enclosure of
the common land to create great unified estates under the control of the
landowner and his or her agents. Vancouver's survey of the agriculture
of Devon published in 1808 had the identification of land suitable for
improvement as a primary aim. He notes,
the encouragement held out by Lord Rolle to the peasantry in his
neighbourhood, to settle and make improvements on the borders
of Woodbury-common and its dependencies, with the healthy
appearance of the fir and some deciduous trees in the clumps and
plantations of that common, sufficiently denote its powers for
improvement, which being disposed of in planting, enclosing, and
proper management, are capable of contributing essentially to the
enlargement of the national stock. The soil along and towards the
heads of some of the hollows, is found of a much better staple than
would be expected from an examination of the ridges and higher
parts of these commons, and affords opportunities for immediately
enclosing some large tracts for the purpose of pasturage and tillage.

(Vancouver [1808] 1969: 293)

Improvement went hand in hand with an increase in agricultural pro-
duction and a more scientific approach to agriculture. What had been an
open English landscape around the heathlands was rapidly transformed
into a network of small enclosed fields. The land itself was cultivated
by leasehold tenant farmers employing landless labourers. At precisely
the same time the garden was transformed by wealthy landowners from
being a relatively small-scale formal structure by the house into an exten-
sive, natural-looking landscape garden. The landscape garden's aesthetic
effect depended ultimately on its utter contrast with productive agricul-
tural land. The 120 acres of the deer park at Bicton grazed only by 200
fallow deer (Whittaker 1892: 48), economically useless and romantically
('naturally') landscaped, has to be considered in its contrast to the res-
caling and redesigning of the wider landscape through enclosure into
an artificial-looking network of more or less rectangular enclosed and
hedged fields. Consequently 'a natural landscape became the preroga-
tive of the estate, allowing for a conveniently ambiguous signification,
so that nature was the sign of property and property the sign of nature'
(Bermington 1986: 14). During the great period of enclosure between
1750 and 1815 the garden and 'nature' were not regarded as being in
opposition but in symbiosis.

The Bicton parkland had its ha-ha, whose introduction to England
is attributed to Charles Bridgeman, allowing one to dispense with fences
or hedges while keeping unwanted livestock out of the estate (Figure
10.11). Horace Walpole noted how it allowed 'the contiguous ground
of the park without the sunken fence ... to be harmonized with the
lawn within' (cited in Bermington 1986: 12). However, as the process
<figure><img src="image_167.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 10.11** Part of the ha-ha at Bicton (Source: author)</figcaption></figure>

<figure><img src="image_168.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 10.12** View from the orangery at Bicton looking across the mirror lake to the distant obelisk (Source: author)</figcaption></figure>
of enclosure proceeded, creating an increasingly artificial landscape external to the park, visual prospects had to be refined to avoid the 'raw-looking new enclosures' (14). The establishment of tree belts along the margins of the estate and the judicious planting of tree clumps facilitated this. The 1845 estate map of Bicton contains an explicit statement that the land in front of the obelisk visible from the formal Italian gardens was not to be ploughed but left as pasture (Figure 10.12).

The entire Bicton estate was an ostentatious display of wealth, power and social domination, from the grazing deer in the extensive parkland to the structured views from the Italian gardens across the landscape to the various architectural elements of the estate: bridges, gatehouses, tower, palm house and so forth. The collection of exotic trees in the arboretum, the collection of exotic shells, the equally exotic collection of birds and animals in a menagerie near to the house, the extensive library, the exotic plants in the palm house all distinguished the Rolles as being people of learning. Cultivation and culture were one and the same thing and the Bicton estate was quite literally a place where culture was being cultivated in stark juxtaposition to its adjacent wild and pagan heathland.
# Early military occupation and use of the heathlands

*Christopher Tilley and Karolína Pauknerová*

A limited series of excavations and a survey of a part of Aylesbeare common down-slope to the north of the Bronze Age summit cairns was undertaken in 2009, centred on SY 0500 9050 (Figure 11.2). Work was undertaken here because of the presence of archaeological features revealed in a roughly rectangular area that had been topsoil-scraped a few years previously. This was on northwest-sloping ground running down to an amphitheatre-shaped marshy area immediately below it and measured approximately 50 m × 20 m. The scraped material had been piled up in a bank running along the edge of the wetland. At the far southeastern end of the scrape part of a structure composed of large pebbles had been revealed (Figure 11.3). Within the remainder of the scrape subsequent vegetation growth revealed the base, or part of the base, of five circular structures forming a NW-SE row running along the contours of the hill slope (Figure 11.4). Subsequent fieldwork established that this row of circular features continued to the northwest, where the land had not been scraped, and that they were just discernible in the dense heathland cover of gorse and heather as circular ditches surrounding level platforms about 5 m in diameter. This tallied with the diameters of the five structures in the scraped area (4–5 m in diameter) and it was clear that all but a basal fragment of the ditch, only a few centimetres deep, had been removed.

A ground-walking survey of the area up-slope from the scrape and to its east that had been recently swaled revealed the presence of two large circular structures consisting of a low bank with an external ditch and a very low, irregularly shaped mound within the southern circle (Figure 11.4). Back in 1937 George Carter had carried out a series of archaeological excavations on Aylesbeare Common, including part of the summit area in the vicinity of the Bronze Age pebble cairns, and had
<figure><img src="image_169.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 11.1** Location map of Aylesbeare Common with survey area
(Source: author)</figcaption></figure>

discovered a series of spectacular pebble platforms that we now interpret
as being of Middle Bronze Age date (discussed in Chapter 6). In the same
publication Carter reported on the excavation of a small barrow in the
bog to the north of the summit area. He describes it thus:

Aylesbeare No. 6. On the edge of the bog in the great natural amphitheatre, below the hill on which these mounds are situated [here Carter is referring to the prehistoric pebble platforms that he excavated that were covered by low mounds] is a low earthen mound about 16ft in diameter, surrounded by a shallow trench. Its surface was not paved. It had been erected over ashy earth, at the base of which was a red pebble lying on water-bearing ground. The mound was apparently erected over a fire sanctifying a spring.

(Carter 1938: 94)

Carter believed this mound to be prehistoric in date, in common
with the pebble pavements he had excavated near to the summit of
<figure><img src="image_170.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 11.2** GPS survey map of Aylesbeare Common by Hazel Riley showing prehistoric cairns, low mounds and late eighteenth-century military structures (Source: author)</figcaption></figure>
<figure><img src="image_171.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 11.3** The rectangular structure exposed in the scrape (Source: author)</figcaption></figure>

<figure><img src="image_172.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 11.4** The circular structures exposed in the scrape (Source: author)</figcaption></figure>
Aylesbeare Common to the north and in the vicinity of the Pebble cairns.

Extensive field walking failed to locate any of the pebble platforms that Carter had found (he left behind only an annotated map with their locations that was unfortunately left unnumbered) (Figure 11.5) but the barrow he described was still visible, with Carter's excavation trench, left unfilled, running through its middle.

In the same report that Carter had published about the barrow in the bog he briefly mentions another group of sites as follows: 'Aylesbeare No. 22 was one of a group of six mounds very similar to No. 6 [the bog barrow], but standing on the hill side. It is a flat unpaved mound, roughly hexagonal in plan, surrounded by a trench, oval in plan, and by a very low

<figure><img src="image_173.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 11.5** Part of Carter's annotated 1906 6-inch Ordnance Survey map of Aylesbeare Common showing the places he excavated in 1937 (Source: Carter archive)</figcaption></figure>
bank of earth whose outer edge is circular. The axes of the mound measure 13ft. 9ins and 11ft. 9ins. Another mound of the group is hemispherical in cross section' (94). He goes on to report that 'the upper portion consisted of barrow earth, below which at the centre stood a great cairn of stones, encased in alternating layers of clay and ash .... No charcoal or flint was found in the digging. The surrounding ditch was examined. It was found that it and the others of the group were provided with a drain for water at the lowest point. The drain was paved and in and under the paving was much charcoal.' He published no photographs but in the somewhat chaotic archive of unpublished manuscripts, correspondence and photographs belonging to him there are a number of photographs labelled on the back as 'Simcoe's circular tent' and 'Simcoe's flagstaff' (Figure 11.6 and Figure 11.7). The precise location is unknown and Carter appears to have written nothing further about these structures.

<figure><img src="image_174.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 11.6** Carter's photograph of 'Simcoe's tent structure' from 1937, one of his sites numbered Aylesbeare no. 22 (Source: Carter archive)</figcaption></figure>
<figure><img src="image_175.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 11.7** Carter's excavation photograph of 'Simcoe's tent' from 1937 showing detail of surrounding ditch (Source: Carter archive)</figcaption></figure>

The local antiquary P.O. Hutchinson visited this area of Aylesbeare Common on 31 May 1861 with Mr Heineken for an 'antiquarian expedition'. He records in his diary:

> We then examined a number of very curious pits on the open heath, of which we had before heard but never seen. They are called 'Soldiers pits' tradition says they were made by soldiers once encamped on this hill. We mean to come another day expressly to examine them.

On 14 June 1861 they did so:

Started with Mr Heineken to examine the 'Soldiers Pits' on Aylesbeare Hill. They lie some 300 to 400 yards north east of the two tumuli planted with fir trees on the top of the hill between Newton Poppleford and the Half House. They consist mostly of pits dug in the ground and the east used to make walls. The pits were evidently reduced. A gap or door appears in each. They are 6 feet by 8 feet, and 6 feet by 12 feet and some larger. They are mostly extended like a street in two parallel rows for more than half a mile. These are also several circular trenches. Perhaps these
were gutters cut around tents to prevent the wet getting into them. We also found two ridges in the form of circles. One we measured was 60 feet across. The other was larger, between one of these and a long square pit we found some parapets made of pebbles found on the hills. We had been told that many patches of products existed in different places. Some had been destroyed by the men cutting turf. Round a bottom, on the north, there are many curious earthworks. There is also a tumulus in the bottom. That all these were pits where soldiers made camp fires, as tradition says must be incorrect. If they are not the remains of an ancient village, some suppose that may have been made about 1799, when a French invasion was expected, or in 1803, when Lieut. Gen Simcoe had his forces on Woodbury Hill and perhaps a portion of them here. The following fancy sketch [Figure 11.8] may give some idea of their position.

(Hutchinson 1870–81)

<figure><img src="image_176.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 11.8** Hutchinson's 1861 sketch map of the soldier's pits on Aylesbeare Common</figcaption></figure>
The 'soldiers pits' are visible on 1947 RAF aerial photographs as two parallel rows of structures, not too dissimilar to Hutchinson's depiction. We decided to excavate across the middle of the destroyed structures in the scrape and the pebble structure that had been uncovered as a salvage exercise. In connection with this we took a trial trench across one of the preserved circular structures on the same line as the others and investigated a low mound discovered in field walking 11.7 m distant to the south of the SE end of the scraped area within a low circular bank (Figure 11.9).

## The excavated structures

### 1. The circular structures

Five shallow circular ditches (I, II, III, A, B) had been exposed by the machine scraping (see Figure 11.3 and Figure 11.9). The circular ditches were on average 5.6 m in diameter (measured to the outside side of the ditches) and during excavation parts of them were visible because of the vegetation that grew in them. These features form a group, the average distance between them about 4.6 m (see Figure 11.10). This structure was simply a levelled feature in the natural surrounded by a cut ditch (see Figure 11.11 and Figure 11.12). There were no finds.

### Interpretation

Features I–III and A and B are very similar in size and morphology to the undamaged feature C. All of them have a similar diameter, in average 5.5 m. from the outer edge of the surrounding ditches. All of them have a circular shape and C a slightly (0.2 m) elevated centre. They are all surrounded by ditches. There were no finds with which to date the structures or their use: no artefacts or fire residues.

The excavated structures confirm Hutchinson's 1861 account, cited above, of the soldiers' pits on Aylesbeare Common, that they were arranged in rows, just above the marshy ground below. The pavements formed the base of circular 'bell tents' used by the British Army at the time (Haythornwaite 1979: 149), with the surrounding ditches channelling away rain-water from the interior. The bell tent is 'a round tent, with perpendicular walls, one or two feet high, and a conical roof, supported by a central pole and short stay-ropes [see Figure 11.6]; the diameter of its base is 14 ft. [i.e. 4.27 m], its height 10 ft., and the area of its base 154 square feet. It cubes about 512 ft., and is presumed to be capable of sheltering on the march from twelve to fifteen men. It weighs when dry
<figure><img src="image_177.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 11.9** General plan of the excavated sites and sections (Source: author)</figcaption></figure>

65 or 70 lbs. The covering is of linen canvas of fair quality, although it has occasionally been made of cotton canvas' (Evans 1873) (Figure 11.13).

Francis Galton, speaking of this tent, says: 'It is so peculiarly objectionable, as to make it a matter of surprise that it was ever invented and
<figure><img src="image_178.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 11.10** Circular ditch A and circular ditch B: profiles</figcaption></figure>

<figure><img src="image_179.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 11.11** Feature C: profile</figcaption></figure>

<figure><img src="image_180.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 11.12** Feature C: section (Source: author)</figcaption></figure>
<figure><img src="image_181.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 11.13** Bell tents of the British Army. Roger Fenton's Crimean war photograph series ('Balaklava from Guard's Hill', LC-USZC4-9168). Source: http://allworldwars.com/Crimean-War-Photographs-by-Roger-Fenton-1955.html (accessed 19 April 2016)</figcaption></figure>

used. It is difficult to pitch, it requires many tent-pegs, it has ropes radiating all around it, over which men and horses stumble, and it is incommo-dious and ugly' (Galton 1867: 154, quoted in Evans 1873).

## 2. The bog barrow (SY 05661 90249)

This structure (134 m OD) is situated just below a gentle east-facing slope on the edge of an extensive boggy area of wetland heath. It is just below and c. 30 m to the east of the end of the topsoil-scraped area with circular features discussed above. It is a round mound surrounded by a circular ditch with an irregular bottom. The mound is perfectly circular and 6 m in diameter and 0.5 m high in the middle. The surrounding silted ditch was 0.9–1 m wide and 0.3–0.5 m deep. In the centre Carter’s 1937 square section was 0.8 m × 0.8 m wide; he also cut a shallow section across the surface of the mound in an easterly direction but did not finish it (Figure 11.14).

In 2010 surface vegetation was removed from the entire mound and the SE quarter was excavated. The surface layer consisted of turfs and roots and a red-brown humic soil and contained a modern bullet casing.
<figure><img src="image_182.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 11.14** Photograph of the deturfed bog barrow with Carter's 1937 trench in the middle (Source: author)</figcaption></figure>

<figure><img src="image_183.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 11.15** Profile of the Bog Barrow showing the position of Carter's trench. (1) Vegetation cover; (2) Carter's 1937 trench; (3) very compact hard material of brownish-grey colour, a mixture of soil, grit and very small pebbles, with a few lenses of white and red sand and black soil; (4) soft very fine-grained material of black colour with small flecks of charcoal; (5) old land surface; (6) cut of ditch; (7) fill of ditch (Source: author)</figcaption></figure>

The remainder of the material (context 3) was very compact and hard. It had brownish-grey colour and was a mixture of soil, grit and small pebbles. In it were lenses of white and red sand and black soil appeared. There were no artefacts in context 3. Near to the base of the mound differently coloured material appeared (context 4). It was soft, very fine-grained and black with small flakes of charcoal (that were all plotted) and covered the entire quadrant. Underneath was the natural surface. Charcoal was the only find material (Figure 11.15 and Figure 11.16). We
<figure><img src="image_184.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 11.16** Section of the Bog Barrow seen from the south while taking environmental samples. The two differently coloured layers of contexts 2 and 4 (see Figure 11.15) are clearly visible. To the right the receding part of the profile is part of Carter's trench in the centre of the mound (Source: author)</figcaption></figure>
<figure><img src="image_185.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 11.17** Part of a pit from Carter's section; the grey part was recognized in the side of Carter's trench. The position is marked by the letter 'x' (Source: author)</figcaption></figure>

<table><caption>Table 11.1 Radiocarbon dates for the bog barrow.</caption><thead><tr><td>Material dated</td><td>Context</td><td>Lab. number</td><td>Date B.P.</td><td>2 sigma calibrated date</td></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Corylus avellana</td><td>Base of ditch</td><td>BETA 292812</td><td>150±30</td><td>AD 1660 to 1890</td></tr><tr><td>Quercus r-w, 8 years</td><td>Base of ditch</td><td>BETA 292813</td><td>160±30</td><td>AD 1660 to 1710 and AD 1710 to 1880</td></tr><tr><td>Quercus r-w, 5 years</td><td>Base of mound</td><td>BETA 292814</td><td>190±30</td><td>AD 1650 to 1730 and AD 1810 to 1920</td></tr><tr><td>Quercus r-w, 9 years</td><td>Base of mound</td><td>BETA 292815</td><td>70±30</td><td>AD 1690 to 1730 and AD 1810 to 1920</td></tr></tbody></table>

also found part of a pit. Carter had drawn this in his section. Its edge was inlaid with small pebbles (Figure 11.17).

Following the excavation the mound was restored and Carter's trench infilled. Thirty charcoal samples were analysed by Dana Challinor (Challinor, Appendix 15). She reports that the vast majority were of oak, much of it from fairly small-diameter roundwood. Two samples contained some heather/ling and one a quantity of alder/hazel. Four of the charcoal samples were submitted for radiocarbon dating, two from the ditch and two from the base of the mound. The results were consistent: all were from around AD 1800 (Table 11.1). This accords very well with the dates given by Hutchinson, 1799 or 1803, for the construction of the soldiers' pits on Aylesbeare Common.
## Interpretation

It seems possible that the mound with its surrounding ditch was just another tent base constructed by Simcoe's militia and that the central pit inlaid with pebbles supported a pole. If this was a tent base its purpose remains enigmatic. Why did Simcoe's troops dig a tent base with surrounding ditch on the edge of a bog in very wet ground (as we were excavating the surrounding ditch was constantly filling with water and was clearly situated on a spring line)? All the other structures of similar size and shape are located higher up on the sheltered hill slope, a short distance from but not actually in the bog.

### 3. The pebble structure in the scrape

This had been partly exposed and damaged by the machine-stripping operations and was excavated in 2009. It proved to be a flat rectangular pavement composed of large pebbles, 7.3 m long and 2.3 m wide, levelled into the hill slope. Down-slope there was an adjoining area of pebbles measuring 1 m square. The pavement is composed of pebbles of various sizes, some laid flat, others vertically, creating a relatively smooth and stable level surface that was comfortable to walk across (Figure 11.18). This was interpreted as a house floor with an entrance on the down-slope side. The pavement was sectioned along the up-slope edge. This showed that the

<figure><img src="image_186.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 11.18** Photograph of rectangular structure in the topsoil scraped area fully exposed (Source: author)</figcaption></figure>
<figure><img src="image_187.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 11.19** Plan of the rectangular structure (Source: author)</figcaption></figure>

pebbles used to construct it were large, 10–18 cm in length and set 6 cm deep into the underlying soil, the colour and composition of which did not differ from the natural surface. There were no artefacts or charcoal. Most pebbles were set vertically but some of the very large ones flat or horizontally. On Hutchinson’s 1861 plan he mentions ‘officers’ tents’ at the eastern end of the middle of two rows of the soldiers’ pits (see Figure 11.8). It may be that the officers at Aylesbeare did not live in tents at all but in a much more substantial rectangular house with a well-laid pebble floor.

## 4. Structures found underneath a low irregular mound to the southwest of the scrape

Another pavement was discovered 11.7 m directly up-slope from the rectangular house pavement described above. The presence of some feature here was indicated by a low (0.2 m high) and very irregularly shaped mound approximately 2–3 m in diameter just visible on the surface. This mound was enclosed by a low irregular circle (see Figure 11.23 and discussion below). Excavation revealed beneath and beyond the extent of the mound a pebble pavement. It was situated on ground sloping to the ESE and had a rhomboidal shape with long sides of 5.85 and 5.3 m and short sides of 3.45 and 3.1 m. At the east side a paved path adjoined it. This was 0.85 m wide and ran straight ESE for 5 m down the hill slope in the direction of the bog below. Its direction then turned slightly towards
the SE. Excavation did not continue after this point. The path was very well preserved for the most part, but 1 m from the point at which it turned direction from running ESE to SE the surface pebble structure was very different from the rest. The pebbles here were random in size and not well laid. It might have been repaired here or built by a different person who was unskilled. There were two pebble gullies running across the path to divert rain-water, one where it was connected to the rhomboidal pavement, the other 3 m distant down-slope.

The upper rhomboid-shaped pavement was at least one third destroyed, hence the irregularity of its form The whole structure comprised pebbles and had edgings of large pebbles on the sides that were preserved. There was also a depression that we interpreted as another water gully running across the shorter dimension, where some of the pebbles were noticeably smaller than the rest and carefully chosen to construct the shallow sides and base of the gully. Most of the structure was composed of pebbles of between 8–15 cm in size laid vertically, contrasting significantly with the larger pebbles used for the edging, which were laid flat or horizontally. This was documented only by a sketch plan, photographs and section drawings (Figure 11.20, Figure 11.21 and Figure 11.24).

Following their exposure both the rhomboidal-shaped pavement and the path were sectioned. These sections did not reveal any artefacts or dateable material. In both cases the pebbles were set in soil whose colour and composition was the same as the natural.

## 5. Large circular structures to the south of the scrape

Following swaling of the area two large circular structures were located by ground survey and subsequently plotted as part of the GPS survey of the area. They consist of a low bank with slight traces of an external ditch (Figure 11.22 and Figure 11.23) situated on a gentle N–S slope. The GPS survey revealed that both were somewhat irregular in shape. The northern circle has an internal diameter of 16 m W–E and 13 m N–S. The southern circle situated immediately above it on the hill slope 2.5 m distant from it has the same W–E and N–S internal dimensions. Entrance ways into either circle were unclear on the ground and the small gaps marked on the GPS plan are probably damaged areas of the banks rather than entrances. A small section 1 m wide was dug across the middle of bank and ditch of the northern circle on the eastern side. The ditch was U-shaped, 1 m wide and 0.15 m deep, while the bank was also 1 m wide and 0.18 m high (Figure 11.24). The material from the ditch had simply been scraped up to form the bank and was of a uniform light grey colour, containing
<figure><img src="image_188.png" /><figcaption>Figure 11.20 Sketch plan of the rhomboid pavement and path (Source: author)</figcaption></figure>
<figure><img src="image_189.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 11.21** (A): Photograph of rhomboid pavement and path; (B): detail of the path leading away from the pavement (Source: author)</figcaption></figure>

only a few small pebbles. There were no finds or dateable material. The northern circle enclosed the irregularly shaped mound (marked on Figure 11.23) under which the rhomboidal pebble pavement discussed above was discovered. The bank ran over the path leading away from it. Thus the circles, both of similar form and morphology, are, we presume, contemporary and post-date the construction of the path. Without further excavation their purpose and date remain obscure but they are in all probability of Second World War date, part of the Exeter airfield decoy structures located on Aylesbeare Common (see Chapter 14).

**Discussion and conclusions**

The radiocarbon dates for the mound in the bog, similar in size and morphology to the other circular structures, indicate a date of around AD 1800.
<figure><img src="image_190.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 11.22** The circular structures marked with flags seen from the southwest (Source: author)</figcaption></figure>

There can be little doubt that these circular structures were part of a line of bell tents as discussed above. There is an interesting difference between the example (or examples) of the bell tent structures that Carter excavated in 1937 that had pebble floors and the one that we trial-trenched and the barrow in the bog that did not. One possibility is that those that Carter excavated are examples of the officers' tents that Hutchinson refers to in his diary. Another is that the original pebble floors were removed and the pebbles taken away for building work. Hutchinson's account refers to 'parapets of pebbles' during his 1861 site visit and that 'we had been told that many patches of products existed in different places. Some had been destroyed by the men cutting turf.' What is probably meant by this is that local labourers were digging both turf for burning and pebbles for building work and piling them up ready to cart away. The soldiers' pits, if they were all originally paved with pebbles, would have provided a readily exploitable source easy to locate on the hill slope.

On the 1840 tithe map of Aylesbeare parish no buildings are marked in this area and so it is likely that the rectangular house base at the end of the scraped area and the pebble structure with a path leading off it post-date 1840. They might also be contemporary with and related to the row of bell tents. The rhomboidal shaped pavement area and the
<figure><img src="image_191.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 11.23** Plan of the circles (Source: author)</figcaption></figure>

<figure><img src="image_192.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 11.24** Profile of the bank and ditch of the northern circle showing the underlying path from the rhomboid pavement (Source: author)</figcaption></figure>
path leading off it, both with their drainage gullies, are entirely typical of
surviving examples of farmyards and paths in the area of the East Devon
Pebblebed heathlands from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (see
*Chapter 13*). The two irregular circles still remain enigmatic. One possi-
bility is that they are the two circles 'in the form of ridges' that Hutchinson
mentions in his diary. The one he measured was 60 feet in diameter (18
m), that is, the same approximate size.

General Simcoe (1752–1806), a gifted and strategic commander, had been appointed the first lieutenant-governor of Upper Canada in 1791 and founded the town of York (now Toronto) the following year. During almost all the eighteenth century Britain was at war with France, but following the French Revolution in 1789 the ruling classes in Britain were increasingly worried about the development of revolutionary tendencies among the populace. This was a time of social unrest and bread riots in the wake of rural destitution. In 1793 Britain had declared war against France and the Napoleonic wars began. Simcoe returned to his native Devon from Canada in 1798, being appointed to command the forces of the west of England because of the very real threat of a French invasion. He had particular responsibility for Somerset and Devon. From 1799 he spent a considerable period of time in his new house at Budleigh Salterton. Perched high up on the side of a hill, from here it was possible for him to watch for any French ships approaching from the west or east along the English Channel.

Woodbury Castle was occupied by Simcoe's troops on an intermittent basis between 1798 and 1803 (Wall 1906; Todd 2005: 211) and it is probable that this occupation resulted in damage to the hillfort interior on the southern side at this time where guns were located on the ramparts. They also made use of Castle Farm in the hillfort interior (now demolished), which had a series of fields (eighteenth-century improved land: see Chapter 10) on the southern side. The field banks now contain a modern pine plantation.

During June 1799 Simcoe arranged a spectacular review of his troops at Woodbury Castle. This included 139 pieces of artillery with horses, 734 cavalry and 2,748 infantry (Fryer and Dracott 1998: 211). Simcoe's review must have been political since there were bread riots at the time in Honiton, Ottery St Mary and other towns across the southwest. At least some of his troops, including contingents from Honiton and Ottery St Mary, were probably temporarily stationed on Aylesbeare Common in a line of bell tents. Such cramped and miserable living conditions could not be sustained indefinitely. The encampment on Aylesbeare was almost certainly relatively short-lived since a temporary
peace was made with France in October 1801 before a new outbreak of
hostilities.

The account of the British Army bell tents discussed earlier in this
chapter is interesting not only in describing the miserable living condi-
tions but also in that these tents were regularly used by the British Army
on the move and could be erected very quickly. Military manoeuvres took
place elsewhere with temporary camps of bell tents for the men taking
part in them (Smith 1995).

Simcoe's troops would have been, for the most part, farm labourer
'volunteers' forced into military service. The troops were stationed on
Aylesbeare Common because it was barren land and of no agricultural
value and so would produce little hostility among local landowners. They
pitched their tents in the lee of the hill in a sheltered position away from
the prevailing southwesterly wind and rain. The marshy ground with
a spring line directly below the line of bell tents would have provided
a ready water supply. Aylesbeare Common was an ideal location for an
encampment in another respect. From the summit of the hill to the south
of the tent line the sea could be seen and any approaching French ships
observed. To the north the site was only a short distance from the main
turnpike road to London (the current A30), along which any invading
army was likely to march.
The embodied poetics of a
nineteenth-century heathlands
landscape

Apart from Vancouver's account discussed in Chapter 10 there is very little historical information about the use of the Pebblebed heathlands. We know that they were not settled. All the villages and farms occur on their fringes. The general pattern of their use continued from the medieval period and before. The open character of the landscape with a virtual absence of trees was maintained by periodic swaling that would take place during the drier summer months and by the grazing of animals, principally cattle and sheep. Although they were owned by the Bicton estate, Commoners from the surrounding villages had grazing rights. Additional activities were furze cutting and digging for peat to provide fuel. Pebbles, the only local source of stone, were quarried or collected for building materials (see Chapter 13).

The principal ‘historian’ and ‘ethnographer’ of the English low-
land heathland, who provides a vivid insight into how the land was used
and its local meanings in the nineteenth century, is the novelist Thomas
Hardy (1840–1928), who was born and brought up on the edge of the
Dorset heathlands. His knowledge of them gains full expression in *The
Return of the Native* ([1878] 1965).

Hardy's Egdon Heath, described in the novel, is a fictional crea-
tion from his experience of at least a dozen different heathland areas
in southeast Dorset, 'these being virtually one in character and aspect,
though their original unity, or partial unity, is now somewhat disguised
by intrusive strips and slices brought under the plough with varying
degrees of success, or planted to woodland' (Hardy [1878] 1965: v). The
importance of the novel in relation to the present account resides both in
its historical and social realism and in Hardy's descriptions of a lowland
heathland landscape well known since his youth. His Egdon Heath is only
just over 80 km due east of the Pebblebed heathlands. Such is the power
of Hardy's work that it has firmly entered, directly or indirectly, into the
contemporary social imagination, colouring our ideas of what heathland
is and why such a landscape might now be worth conserving. Natural
England, the Environment Agency, the Royal Society for the Protection
of Birds and other environmental organizations have since the late 1980s
been cooperating to restore and manage a vision of Hardy's Dorset heath-
land in their own Egdon Heath Project, in which reference to the novel
has become a publicity tool (see www.dorsetforyou.com/336679).

In the novel Hardy describes the wildlife of the heath, traditional
heathland occupations and the deep-rooted and enduring pagan customs
of its inhabitants. On his heathland the grazing animals were primarily
a breed of small, wild, hardy Exmoor-type ponies, herds of up to 30 ani-
mals but too few to detract much from the solitude of the heath. These
are the 'heath croppers' that occur throughout the novel. Sheep and their
shepherds were only to be found on the downland to the north and west
lying off the heathland areas. Dairy herds similarly occur off the heath and
there are no grazing cattle. The wildlife of the heaths that he mentions
include night hawks, buzzards, night jars, rabbits, adders, grass snakes,
toads and frogs breeding in shallow pools that dry up during the summer,
glow worms, spiders, ants, moths, bats, rare orange butterflies, emerald
green grasshoppers and huge flies 'ignorant of larders and wire netting'
(156, 258 and elsewhere). The vegetation consists of tall and short furze
or gorse, bracken, heather and brambles, thyme, lichens and moss.

The primary heathland occupations consist of furze and turf cut-
ting to provide fuel and there are numerous gravel pits. Brambles are
used for furze faggot bonds (259) and bracken for numerous purposes
including animal bedding and preserving apples (118). The heath pro-
vides its fruits of whortleberries and blackberries and there are numer-
ous fungi in the late summer and autumn. Furze faggots, subsequently
collected and built up into ricks, could be sold for half a crown a hun-
dred (256). Furze and turf cutting are solitary, monotonous and ardu-
ous occupations requiring few tools: large heart-shaped spades for the
latter, a whetstone and a billhook for the fomer. Special protective attire
is a necessity for working in the furze, sturdy boots, thick, bulging lea-
ther leggings, long gauntlets and sleeve waistcoat: 'the silent being who
thus occupied himself seemed to be of no more account in life than an
insect. He appeared as a mere parasite of the heath, fretting its surface
in his daily labour as a moth frets a garment, entirely engrossed with its
products, having no knowledge of anything in the world but fern, furze,
heath, lichens and moss' (283).

Although Hardy does not romanticize his heathland characters, as
he was only too aware of the vicissitudes of rural labour, he clearly has
a passion for a landscape that in his day had already become virtually
obsolete from an economic point of view: 'a place which had slipped out
of its century generations ago, to intrude as an uncouth object into this
[the nineteenth century]' (181).

William Cobbett, farmer and radical politician, in his famous *Rural Rides*
undertaken during the 1820s, consistently describes the heathlands that he
encounters as being 'ugly', 'wretched', 'villainous' and 'rascally' (e.g. Cobbett
[1830] 2001: 39). Hardy's veiled comment on such a perspective is this:

> How could this be otherwise in the days of square fields, plashed
> hedges, and meadows watered on a plan so regular that on a fine
> day they look like silver gridirons? The farmer, in his ride, who
> could smile at artificial grasses, look with solicitude at the coming
> corn, and sigh with sadness at the fly-eaten turnips, bestowed upon
> the distant upland of heath nothing better than a frown.

(Hardy [1878] 1965: 181)

What Hardy was commenting on was that until the early nineteenth cen-
tury the heath had been a valued resource and was an integral part of the
rural economy. A will then developed to improve this barren and useless
land through its agricultural transformation.

Hardy's heath, as an obsolete landscape, is one in which rural tradi-
tions and pagan customs endure, long forgotten elsewhere. In name the
scattered inhabitants of the heath are Christians and parishioners 'but
they virtually belonged to no parish at all' (128). The only time any of
the characters in the novel attend church is for wedding ceremonies that
take place off the heath. Eustacia Vye, one of the central characters in
the novel, is believed by some to be a witch. Susan Nonsuch makes an
effigy of her out of beeswax and pricks it with pins to protect her son.
Maypoles are lavishly decorated with wildflowers, the mummers play out
a traditional St George play at Christmas time. Oil extracted from freshly
killed adders is used as a cure for snake bite. Dancing takes place on Guy
Fawkes night around a fire lit on top of a prehistoric barrow, itself an
ancient rite of pagan origin (see Chapter 3).

The fire takes place on top of a Bronze Age barrow situated in the
centre of the heath. Fire is also used as a messaging device for secret
lovers' trysts taking place at the barrow. Hardy's heath is transiently
occupied by the striking figure of the itinerant reddleman, his clothing and flesh saturated with the red dye that he sells as redding for the sheep that graze in fields beyond it. A traditional bogeyman for children, 'he was one of a class rapidly becoming extinct in Wessex, filling at present in the rural world the place which, during the last century, the dodo occupied in the world of animals' (16). Hardy's characters play out roles and take part in customs and events which he learnt of through stories told at his parents' hearth at Higher Bockhampton on the edge of Piddletown (now Puddledown) heath, much of which is presently occupied by conifer plantations.

Landscape and topographical descriptions give verisimilitude to the novel, establishing a historical and cultural setting, grounding it 'out there', and are essential to its realism and appeal:

> [T]he scene before the reddleman's eyes was a gradual series of ascents from the level of the road backward into the heart of the heath. It embraced hillocks, pits, ridges, acclivities, one behind the other, till all was finished by a high hill cutting against the still light sky. The traveller's eye hovered about these things for a time, and finally settled upon one noteworthy object up there. It was a barrow.

> (Hardy [1878] 1965: 19)

The narrative takes place in terms of named topographic features and their spatial relationships, joined by paths and roads, some well worn, others scarcely used. The novel is a figurative mapping of the heathland in relation to which the lives of its characters are embodied. In the map that Hardy drew for the first edition (1878), the heath is depicted as being twice as long, west to east, as it is broad (north-south). A river, the 'Shadwater Weir', bounds the heath to the south. The main characters live at Bloom's End to the west, Mistover to the north, the Quiet Woman Inn to the south and on the eastern side on the periphery of the heath and beyond. There are few roads across the heath, and the characters in the novel generally walk across it to meet each other following the numerous fugitive heathland paths: 'those who knew it well called it a path; and while a mere visitor would have passed it unnoticed even by day, the regular haunters of the heath were at no loss for it at midnight .... The whole secret of following these incipient paths [at night] lay in the development of the sense of touch in the feet' (63).

In the novel the space of the landscape becomes charged with the particular subjective meanings of the enacted story. This is a complex form of metonymy in which the landscape and the characters interact
to establish a double meaning and sense of place. Each forms part of the
other in their material relations. The landscape of the novel is therefore
not a pre-existing self-sufficient entity. It is made into a landscape, into
a humanly meaningful place, by the acts of labour and dwelling that are
described and the events that take place within its contours. An important role for the landscape is that it reflects the inner emotional state of the characters. Thus it is made human, made into a landscape rather than being a mere environment, by being both inhabited and recorded by Hardy himself.

The realism of Hardy's novel is made possible because this was a
landscape that he himself inhabited throughout his life. Being brought
up on the edge of Puddletown heath, his embodied relationship with
that landscape is described through the medium of the characters. Clym,
the native of the heath who returns from Paris to make the heath his
home once more, had been 'so inwoven with the heath in his boyhood
that hardly anybody could look upon it without thinking of him' (175).
Furthermore he was

permeated with its scenes, with its substance, and with its odours.
He might be said to be its product. His eyes had first opened
thereon; with its appearance all the first images of his memory
were mingled; his estimate of life had been coloured by it; his toys
had been the flint knives and arrowheads which he found there ...
his flowers, the purple bells and yellow furze; his animal kingdom,
the snakes and croppers; his society, its human haunters.

(Hardy [1878] 1965: 180)

Hardy's own mental map of the heath and the semi-fictional map
of it that he drew to illustrate the book are materialized in the novel.
His own individual experiences become distributed through those of the
characters that play out their lives within the heathland landscape, while
he himself stands outside these lives, orchestrating them as 'independ-
ent' narrator. Hardy sets the novel in the period 1840-50, that of his own
childhood, and there is little doubt that some of the descriptions are rec-
ollections of his own childhood experiences of crossing the heathland.
Its frightening aspect at dusk and in the dark is described when the boy,
Johnny Nonsuch, returns home: the gorse bushes 'whistled gloomily, and
had a ghastly habit after dark of putting on the shapes of jumping mad-
men, sprawling giants, and hideous cripples' (80). The novel both creates
the landscape and the events that take place within it and in turn is cre-
ated by that landscape. Representation and reality are thus in a perpetual
‘artful’ and shifting relation in the novel and its pictorial representation in the form of the map that Hardy made out of it. Hillis Miller puts this well: ‘novel and map; real map and imaginary map; landscape and map. Each is both prior to the other and later than it, causer and caused, inside it and outside it at once’ (Hillis Miller 1995: 21).

The houses of the characters in the novel are distributed around the periphery of the heath. In the map that Hardy drew, a prehistoric barrow, Black Barrow (in the first edition) or Rainbarrow (in later editions), is at the centre (Figure 12.1). It is the fulcrum around which the novel revolves. It provides an important orientation point for the characters as they wend their way across the heath, and it articulates their actions and movements as they move towards or away from it. Hardy describes the barrow thus:

> This bossy projection of earth above its natural level occupied the loftiest ground of the loneliest height that the heath contained.... It formed the pole and axis of this heathery world.

(Hardy [1878] 1965: 19)

The prehistoric barrow itself links past and present through its continued pagan presence in the landscape. It has far more significance to the lives of the heath dwellers than any church, all of which are decended off the heath. Probably the best description we have of a fire festival (discussed in Chapter 3) is from Hardy:

> It was as if these men and boys had suddenly dived into past ages and fetched therefrom an hour and deed which had been familiar with this spot. The ashes of the original British pyre which blazed from that summit lay fresh and undisturbed in the barrow beneath their tread. The flames from funeral pyres long ago kindled there had shone down upon the lowlands as these were shining now. Festival fires to Thor and Woden had followed on the same ground, and duly had their day. Indeed, it is pretty well known that such blazes as this the heathmen were now enjoying are rather the lineal descendants from jumbled Druidical rites and Saxon ceremonies than the invention of popular feeling about Gunpowder plot.

Moreover to light a fire is the instinctive and resistant act of men when, at the winter ingress, the curfew is sounded throughout Nature. It indicates a spontaneous Promethean rebelliousness against the fiat that this recurrent season shall bring forth foul
times, cold darkness, misery and death. Black chaos comes, and the
fettered gods of the earth say, Let there be light.

(Hardy [1878] 1965: 23)

<figure><img src="image_193.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 12.1** Hardy's sketch map of Egdon Heath published in the first edition (1878) of *The Return of the Native*</figcaption></figure>
The barrow is a place of death and fire rituals. It is also a place where commemorative fires are still kindled out of furze faggots in the present, a place for dancing, trysting and love-making. The barrow and the heath beyond embrace and preserve the past in the present. A lack of tending or cultivation of the heath, which Hardy notes have preserved the barrow in the face of agrarian intensification that has taken place elsewhere, provides a sense of solace in relation to a culture of unsettling and permanent change: 'To know that everything around and underneath had been from prehistoric times as unaltered as the stars overhead, gave ballast to the mind adrift on change, and harassed by the irrepressible New. The great inviolate place had an ancient permanence' (14).

This timeless landscape is equally indifferent to human life (329) and the elements. Storms which 'tore the trees merely waved the furze and heather in a light caress. Egdon was made for such times as these' (217). The heath has an enduring and invincible character: 'in some of the attempts at reclamation from the waste, tillage, after holding on for a year or two, had receded again in despair, the ferns and furze-tufts stubbornly reasserting themselves .... The sea changed, the fields changed, the rivers, the villages, and the people changed, yet Egdon remained' (14).

Nearly all commentators have understood that the central character in the novel is the heath itself. The heath, 'appealing to the sentiment rather than the eye' (Hardy, letter to George Putnam, cited in Cullen Brown 1990: 296), is personified as a dark, brooding creature. The characters within the novel are the personification of this personification. Neither male nor female, the heath is an androgynous body. It gathers darkness to itself and exhales it out: 'The face of the heath by its mere complexion added half an hour to evening; it could in like manner retard the dawn, sadden noon, anticipate the frowning of storms .... The sombre stretch of rounds and hollows seemed to rise and meet the evening gloom in pure sympathy, the heath exhaling darkness as rapidly as the heavens precipitated it' (11–12). 'Only in summer days of highest feather did its mood touch the level of gaiety ... Intensity was more usually reached by way of the solemn than by way of the brilliant ... for the storm was its lover and the wind its friend' (13).

In places the heath is likened to a nameless being, part-animal, part-human, a consciousness without intentionality. Eustacia follows the path over the autumnal entrails of the heath: 'Skirting the pool she followed the path towards Rainbarrow, occasionally stumbling over twisted furze roots, tufts of rushes, or oozing lumps of fleshy fungi, which at this season lay scattered about the heath like the rotten liver and lungs of some colossal animal' (359).
Elsewhere the heath possesses characteristics likened to social
being or humanity in a generic sense:

It was at present a place perfectly accordant with man's nature – neither ghastly, hateful nor ugly: neither commonplace, unmeaning, nor tame; but, like man, slighted and enduring and withal singularly colossal and mysterious in its swarthy monotony. As with some persons who have long lived apart, solitude seemed to look out of its countenance. It had a lonely face, suggesting tragical possibilities.

(Hardy [1878] 1965: 13)

The solitude here appears to be that of the ‘slighted’ Hardy himself and
the tragical actualities of his own life (see Gittings 1980a, 1980b for a
detailed account). The heath, like all nature for Hardy, an unconscious
thing utterly indifferent to human life, plays out its own inherent ‘tragi-
cal possibilities’ through the medium of the characters’ tragic lives and
their relationships to each other that take place and are directly influ-
enced by this landscape. Hardy’s character as narrator is personified in
the heath itself. His own phenomenal experiences of that landscape are
distributed through the medium of the characters and their interaction
with it.

The connections Hardy made between the world of nature and the
world of his own phenomenal human bodily experience are primarily
of an anthropomorphic and metamorphic or analogic character. The
heath is a human body, it has a ‘grim old face’ and a ‘shrivelled voice’,
its own odours; its vegetation is like hair: ‘the path was an infinitely
small parting in the shaggy locks of the heath’ (159). The heathland
landscape even possesses its own audible particularity that varies from
place to place:

It was possible to view by ear the features of the neighbourhood.
Acoustic pictures were returned by the darkened scenery; they
could hear where the tracts of heather began and ended; where the
furze was growing stalky and tall; where it had recently been cut; in
what direction the fir-clump lay.

(Hardy [1878] 1965: 93)

Seasonality and the natural cycle become for Hardy a meditation
on human life and death:
The July sun shone over Egdon and fired its crimson heather to scarlet. It was the one season of the year, and the one weather of the season, in which the heath was gorgeous. This flowering period represented the second or noontide division in the cycle of those superficial changes which alone were possible here; it followed the green or young-fern period representing the morn, and preceded the brown period, when the heath-bells and ferns would wear the russet tinges of evening; to be in turn displaced by the dark hue of the winter period representing night'

(Hardy [1878] 1965: 245)

The elemental forms of the sun and the moon are fundamental to a novel that takes place in a wide and open landscape and one in which the central characters move across the landscape by day and by night and in accordance with sunrise and sunset. The fires on Rainbarrow emulate the sun, the reddleman is the colour of the sun, the furze cutters faces are browned by it, Mrs Yeobright is killed by its heat, characters retire to bed or move toward sunrise and sunset. Solar images powerfully define Eustacia's changing relationship to her lovers, Wildeve and Clym, and to Diggory, the reddleman.

Relevant to humanity, the heath in its timelessness remains indifferent to either the sun or the moon: 'in the course of many days and weeks sunrise had advanced its quarters from northeast to southeast, sunset had receded from northwest to southwest; but Egdon had hardly heeded the change' (113). The heath itself remains dark even in moonlight 'powerless to silver such sable features' (138).

## Conclusions

Hardy's fiction in its historical and social realism, and through the knowledge gained by his own embodied personal experience, is undoubtedly the most powerful and evocative description of a heathland landscape ever written. Replace topographical and geological details and Hardy's Egdon Heath could be the East Devon Pebblebed heathlands.

In spite, or perhaps precisely because of the melancholic character of Hardy's depiction of heathland and the tragic potentialities for its human inhabitants that are acted out in the course of the novel, heathland has become of contemporary relevance. It has now gained value and appeal, become something thought worth conserving.
However, there is a fundamental difference between Hardy's histori-
cized, humanized and peopled landscape and the kind of heathland that
is currently being preserved under a contemporary environmental con-
servation agenda (see Chapter 14). This is a recreational heathland, for
the most part irrelevant to the daily lives of most people, who no longer
work in it. Its primary significance is now not held to reside in its history
or its prehistoric monuments, but is instead being couched in terms of a
'timeless' web of ecological relations that need to be engineered or man-
aged. It is these rather than its human meanings that take precedence in
contemporary discourses, and so, in this sense, such a heathland vision
conspicuously lacks a human face.
# A vernacular pebbled landscape

Jill Cobley and Christopher Tilley

Pebbles have always, until comparatively recently, provided the principal building stone in the East Devon heathland landscape. They are still common in the vernacular architecture but have never previously been documented. As part of the Pebblebeds research project all structures in the 17 villages and in hamlets and farmland surrounding the heathlands in the East Devon area were recorded and photographed to create the first photographic archive, which is now lodged in the Devon Records Office, Exeter.

The traditional cob and thatch cottages throughout most of the area were invariably provided with foundation courses for the walls of large pebbles, as were barns and other farm buildings. Building structures with pebbles reached its peak from about the mid-1800s to the early 1900s. Ottery St Mary, Budleigh Salterton, Woodbury, Newton Poppleford and other villages were once paved with pebbles. 'Popple' is the local term for pebble and the village name Newton Poppleford refers to the ford over the pebbles that form the bed of the river Otter here. Sadly, today they have mostly disappeared beneath concrete and tarmac. The majority of the pebbles for walls, paths, gutters and edging came from the fields or small quarries around the area, and it is still possible today to buy pebbles for landscaping gardens and building from the Rockbeare quarries.

The earliest 6-inch maps of the Ordnance Survey of this area, dating back to 1890 and 1891, record numerous larger and smaller 'gravel' (actually pebble and sand) pits. In all there were about 67 smaller and larger workings. They are concentrated along the western scarp of the heathlands, with smaller numbers along the eastern edges of the pebblebed exposures and a few in the middle of the heathlands. Most are close to or on roads (Figure 13.1). Some of these pits to the south of Black
<figure><img src="image_194.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 13.1** The distribution of pebble quarries and pits on the heathlands from the earliest Ordnance Survey maps (Source: author)</figcaption></figure>
Hill, around the Warren and on Aylesbeare Common, covered quite an extensive area of shallow workings. Smaller pits were often little more than irregular scoops of material used locally.

The finer paths and walls built of smaller pebbles of similar size were collected from Budleigh Salterton beach, but this is now illegal. This was the practice in the 1800s, when pebbles of similar size and col-our were brought from the beach by pony and trap. This is known to have happened at Lympstone, where a John Long brought pebbles from the beach and built a path with a central line of black pebbles and the date ‘1861’ depicted in black pebbles (Figure 13.2a).

All the villages have distinctive pebble structures that make them unique to this area of East Devon. However, it has to be said that the use of pebbles is not exclusive to this area, as beach pebbles or small stones are used for paths, roads and building foundations in coastal areas in the surrounding counties of Cornwall, Dorset and Somerset. This chap-ter highlights examples from the 829 recorded structures from the East Devon towns and villages. Table 13.1 details the types of extant struc-tures recorded between 2008 and 2010. These are most frequent in the villages of Newton Poppleford and Colaton Raleigh on the eastern side of the Pebblebed heathlands and in the seaside town of Budleigh Salterton to the south. On the western side of the heathlands they are most frequent in Woodbury and Topsham on the Exe estuary.

The use of pebbles as a building material would have been an everyday occurrence, because they were readily available, but people of status

<figure><img src="image_195.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 13.2a** The pebble path John Long built at Lympstone (Source: author)</figcaption></figure>
<table><caption>Table 13.1 Pebble structures documented in the East Devon area.</caption><thead><tr><th rowspan="2">Place</th><th colspan="5">Wall</th><th colspan="5">Surface</th><th colspan="2">Building</th><th rowspan="2">Others</th><th rowspan="2">Total</th></tr><tr><th>Boundary</th><th>Retaining</th><th>Boundary/ retaining</th><th>Pebble foundation</th><th>Capping</th><th>Path: p</th><th>Path: d</th><th>Yard</th><th>Edge</th><th>Gutter</th><th>Barn</th><th>Other</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Aylesbeare</td><td>6</td><td>0</td><td>4</td><td>2</td><td>0</td><td>3</td><td>1</td><td>1</td><td>4</td><td>0</td><td>2</td><td>1</td><td>0</td><td>24</td></tr><tr><td>Budleigh Salterton</td><td>15</td><td>9</td><td>20</td><td>14</td><td>2</td><td>2</td><td>3</td><td>1</td><td>2</td><td>12</td><td>0</td><td>2</td><td>1</td><td>83</td></tr><tr><td>Colaton Raleigh</td><td>51</td><td>18</td><td>15</td><td>7</td><td>0</td><td>8</td><td>1</td><td>3</td><td>5</td><td>3</td><td>25</td><td>3</td><td>3</td><td>142</td></tr><tr><td>Dalditch</td><td>8</td><td>1</td><td>0</td><td>1</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>3</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>13</td></tr><tr><td>East Budleigh</td><td>5</td><td>1</td><td>1</td><td>0</td><td>2</td><td>18</td><td>0</td><td>3</td><td>1</td><td>10</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>41</td></tr><tr><td>Exmouth</td><td>2</td><td>5</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>1</td><td>2</td><td>1</td><td>1</td><td>6</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>1</td><td>19</td></tr><tr><td>Exeter</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>7</td><td>2</td><td>3</td><td>28</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>2</td><td>42</td></tr><tr><td>Fluxton</td><td>5</td><td>3</td><td>0</td><td>1</td><td>0</td><td>1</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>1</td><td>0</td><td>2</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>13</td></tr><tr><td>Honiton</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>2</td><td>2</td><td>0</td><td>13</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>17</td></tr><tr><td>Kersbrook</td><td>2</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>1</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>1</td><td>1</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>1</td><td>5</td></tr><tr><td>Knowle</td><td>12</td><td>1</td><td>0</td><td>3</td><td>4</td><td>3</td><td>0</td><td>1</td><td>1</td><td>1</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>27</td></tr></tbody></table>
<table><tr><td>Lympstone</td><td>1</td><td>0</td><td>2</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>12</td><td>3</td><td></td><td>8</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>3</td><td>26</td></tr><tr><td>Metcombe</td><td>4</td><td>9</td><td>2</td><td>7</td><td>0</td><td>1</td><td>0</td><td>1</td><td>6</td><td>0</td><td>2</td><td>2</td><td>0</td><td>37</td></tr><tr><td>Newton Poppleford</td><td>33</td><td>18</td><td>17</td><td>9</td><td>0</td><td>7</td><td>1</td><td>6</td><td>7</td><td>1</td><td>4</td><td>7</td><td>0</td><td>110</td></tr><tr><td>Otterton</td><td>4</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>1</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>1</td><td>1</td><td>5</td><td>0</td><td>1</td><td>0</td><td>1</td><td>13</td></tr><tr><td>Ottery St Mary</td><td>2</td><td>3</td><td>0</td><td>1</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>7</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>27</td></tr><tr><td>Southerton</td><td>2</td><td>1</td><td>4</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>13</td><td>0</td><td>3</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>1</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>11</td></tr><tr><td>Topsham</td><td>1</td><td>1</td><td>0</td><td>2</td><td>0</td><td>28</td><td>6</td><td>7</td><td>28</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>73</td></tr><tr><td>Venn Ottery</td><td>0</td><td>1</td><td>3</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>1</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>1</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>6</td></tr><tr><td>West Hill</td><td>0</td><td>2</td><td>9</td><td>1</td><td>0</td><td>2</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>1</td><td>0</td><td>1</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>16</td></tr><tr><td>Whimple</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>1</td><td>2</td><td>0</td><td>1</td><td>0</td><td>1</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>1</td><td>6</td></tr><tr><td>Woodbury</td><td>51</td><td>8</td><td>1</td><td>1</td><td>1</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>62</td></tr><tr><td>Woodbury Salterton</td><td>5</td><td>1</td><td>2</td><td>1</td><td>1</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>10</td></tr><tr><td>Yettington</td><td>3</td><td>1</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>2</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>6</td></tr><tr><td>Total</td><td>212</td><td>83</td><td>80</td><td>52</td><td>12</td><td>111</td><td>21</td><td>34</td><td>126</td><td>28</td><td>42</td><td>15</td><td>13</td><td>829</td></tr></table>

Note: Surfaces: path, p: pebble path; path, d: decorative pebble path; edge: pebble edge to path.
evidently used flint or brick in this area because it made a distinctive material statement, reinforcing their social distinction from ordinary people building with local pebbles. The absence of pebble structures among the principal structures among the grounds of Bicton House, at Knowle House and at Tidwell Manor and elsewhere is symptomatic of this.

The Rolle family at Bicton assiduously avoided using the local vernacular building material, pebbles, in any of their Gothic constructions such as the shell house and the hermitage even though they might have provided a suitably rustic effect. Interestingly the reverse was the case at Killerton House near Cullompton, where Lydia Dyke Acland had a 'Bear Hut' built, with part of the flooring consisting of pebbles laid in a pattern and pebbles used in the surrounding area outside (Figure 13.2b). But in this case pebbles were not local material and had to be transported a long distance from the East Devon Pebblebeds. At Bicton the only places that pebbles were used were around the glass houses and in the formal Italian gardens as pathways. Fish comments that they were 'set firmly and regularly on end, each being about the size of Lapstone Kidney Potatoes ... in all the pathways in the grounds having any considerable declivity, the sides of the walk, for about the width of a foot, are pitched with smaller pebbles' (Fish 1858: 66). The Rolles could walk around their pleasure grounds on pebble pathways that provided both 'in the heaviest rain, as well as during the bright sunshine, a pleasant firm pathway ... in which you could leave no footmarks' (Fish 1858: 66). These are today all tarmacked over.

<figure><img src="image_196.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 13.2b** The pebble floor in the 'Bear Hut' in the grounds of Killerton House, Cullompton (Source: author)</figcaption></figure>
## Types of pebble structures

The Aylesbeare Village Hall entrance lobby has a pebble floor, with the design picked out in black pebbles to represent a door mat, with a diamond pattern in-filling the central section (Figure 13.2c). These were collected from Budleigh Salterton beach, because when the hall was built in 1923 pebbles were regarded as the most suitable decorative building material. This diamond pattern is repeated on paths in Newton Poppleford and Otterton.

At Budleigh Salterton the pebble wall running down Saltings Hill is an iconic example of uniform rows of pebbles forming a wall (Figure 13.2d). An almost unique feature of the town is the roadside pebble guttering formed from neat rows of pebbles 5 cm (2 inches) to 10 cm in size lining the drainage gutters. Fine examples can also be found on the sea front, running for almost 100 m, and along Cliff Terrace, Ryll Lane and Landsdown Road (Figure 13.3a).

The majority of walls are constructed from rows of pebbles with a concrete capping. Barns built of pebbles with brick quoins are a feature

<figure><img src="image_197.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 13.2c** Aylesbeare village hall: entrance lobby with a pebble 'mat' in a diamond design (Source: author)</figcaption></figure>
<figure><img src="image_198.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 13.2d** Pebble wall, Saltings, Budleigh Salterton (Source: author)</figcaption></figure>

<figure><img src="image_199.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 13.3a** Budleigh Salterton seafront: drainage guttering
(Source: author)</figcaption></figure>
of some villages, with the pebbles being collected from pits and the surrounding fields and not brought from the beach (Figure 13.3b).

At East Budleigh there is a recent example of a new pebble wall that has been capped with tiles, showing that some people today hold pebbles in high regard as decorative building material (Figure 13.3c). Along the High Street there are pebble paths, with the pathways into the house defined with the pebbles running in the opposite direction.

At Fluxton there is what has to be one of the most amazing pebble structures, built 40 years ago with pebbles that were collected from the river Otter and sorted in the local farmyard. This decorative wall capped with tiles has arches and windows and dominates the garden, and is unique. It was built by a local stonemason, Gordon Ash (Figure 13.3d).

One of the largest pebbled areas can be found at Lympstone, where the whole of Quay Lane has a pebble path running between the cottages down to the estuary (Figure 13.4a). At Newton Poppleford 110 structures have been recorded, the majority being walls, running along the length of the High Street. Fine examples of decorative paths can be found in the village along Station Road (Figure 13.4b). Several walls have been painted black, as at the Southern Cross tea rooms, and the only other

<figure><img src="image_200.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 13.3b** Pebble barn with brick quoins: The Warren, on the western side of the Pebblebed heathlands (Source: author)</figcaption></figure>
<figure><img src="image_201.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 13.3c** New pebble decorative wall in East Budleigh
(Source: author)</figcaption></figure>

<figure><img src="image_202.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 13.3d** Pebble wall with arches and doorways, Gnome Cottage, Fluxton (Source: author)</figcaption></figure>
<figure><img src="image_203.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 13.4a** Pebble path, Quay area, Lympstone (Source: author)</figcaption></figure>

example of this is at Woodbury. The only church in the 17 villages to have pebbles used in the construction of the walls is St Gregory's, where they feature in the side chapel wall (Figure 13.4c). Pebble farmyards were once a common feature in the area but most are now concreted over. Examples can be still found at Southerton, Newton Poppleford and Dotton (Figure 13.4d).

Topsham has examples of pebbles from the area and black angular pebbles that must have come from elsewhere or are from the river Exe, but nobody so far has been able to identify their source. Their use as edgings and paths can be found throughout Topsham, but some Bunter pebble structures have been identified making decorative surface features in front gardens (Figure 13.5a, b).

Woodbury Parish Council has insisted that all new building in the village should have pebble walls, which is a welcome development, and this can be seen at Gilbrook estate (Figure 13.5c). Along Greenway there is a perfect pebble wall topped with limestone blocks (Figure 13.5b) and a path of fan-shaped design (Figure 13.5d). The path would have been built with the pebbles packed tightly together so that the stones
<figure><img src="image_204.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 13.4b** Decorative path, Station Road, Newton Poppleford
(Source: author)</figcaption></figure>

supported each other; they were embedded into the earth with only the tips of the small pebbles showing. This was built by a local builder, Charles Summerfield, in the 1900s (Brighouse 1981: 239). The church wall is of a similar design to Colaton Raleigh church, with a decorative capping of tiles and bricks and brick quoins.

## Pebble colour and size

Having briefly reviewed the different types of structures that exist it just remains to highlight the differences in size and colours of the pebbles that can be seen across the area. The pebbles used in some of the walls in Woodbury are of a larger size than elsewhere. Some are up to 45 cm (18 inches) long, although the average is 20 cm (8 inches). They are not always a uniform size in many structures, and a large number of black pebbles are included in the walls. At Budleigh Salterton the pebbles found in the walls are on average 10 cm (4 inches) long and of a uniform
<figure><img src="image_205.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 13.4c** St Gregory's church wall, Newton Poppleford (Source: author)</figcaption></figure>

size. At Colaton Raleigh and Newton Poppleford the most striking feature about the pebbles is their variety of colours. They range from red to yellow, grey to brown, olive to black, whilst at other villages the pebbles chosen to build structures are less colourful. This may well indicate the differential selection of very bright and particularly colourful pebbles in these two villages.

Two examples of the use of alien pebbles can be found in the area. One is at the Halfway House pub almost in the middle of the Pebblebed heathlands, where flint pebbles have been used for a retaining edging, the nearest probable source being Sidmouth. The other is hard landscaping in a garden using Charmouth beach pebbles because the owner considered the pebbles were of a better colour, that is, more uniform, and a smaller size than the local pebbles.

During recent sea defence work along the esplanade at Sidmouth the flint and greensand pebbles on the beach were buried by 150,000 tons of new pebbles transported from Black Hill quarry on the Pebblebed
<figure><img src="image_206.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 13.4d** Pebble farmyard, Dotton (Source: author)</figcaption></figure>

heathlands, making this stretch of the beach pebbles unusually brightly coloured and very similar to that at Budleigh Salterton, except that the pebbles are less smooth and well rounded. Pebbles from the same source were used to make ornamental features under the M5 motorway bridges outside Exeter during the 1970s.

The vernacular pebble architecture of the area manifests both a care and concern for pebbles in what might be regarded as simply ‘functional’ structures such as walls, paths, gutters, farmyards and buildings mostly of eighteenth-, nineteenth- and twentieth-century date. The earliest of these is the medieval church of St Gregory in Newton Poppleford. But all these structures are function made beautiful. The pebbles have been carefully selected, their arrangements patterned in terms of colour and form, shape and size, sometimes with quite an extraordinary attention to detail. The care taken and the attention to detail shown remind us once again of the bodily engagement involved and the fascination with what it is possible to do with these particular kinds of stones.
<figure><img src="image_207.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 13.5a** Typical Topsham pebble path (Source: author)</figcaption></figure>

<figure><img src="image_208.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 13.5b** Decorative pebble path in front garden at Topsham
(Source: author)</figcaption></figure>
<figure><img src="image_209.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 13.5c** Gilbrook estate, Woodbury: new pebble boundary wall
(Source: author)</figcaption></figure>

<figure><img src="image_210.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 13.5d** Woodbury: pebble wall with limestone topping (Source: author)</figcaption></figure>
# The heathlands in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries

In this chapter I consider the changing character of the heathland landscape from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present day. The following issues will be addressed: how has the character of the heathland changed? To what extent can we trace any continuity from the prehistoric and historic landscape? What is the effect of those who work in and use the landscape today on the heath itself? The contemporary management, meaning and use of the heathlands is discussed in great detail elsewhere in an anthropological study (Tilley and Cameron-Daum 2017). Consequently only some major issues will be briefly addressed here. The interested reader is referred to that much wider study.

## Change and continuity in the landscape

During the twentieth century the character of the heathland landscape changed substantially. The heathlands reached their maximum extent in the medieval to early post-medieval periods, as in other areas of southern England. The agricultural improvements discussed by Vancouver (see Chapter 10) taking place in the early nineteenth century resulted in substantial areas being lost, mainly to rough pasture. These were mainly on the heathland fringe or along valleys cutting into it. This can be seen from a comparison of tithe maps from around 1840 and the first edition of the Ordnance Survey maps dating back to the 1890s. Losses since 1906 have been estimated at 640 ha, with 380 ha lost since 1947. Of this 166 ha was lost to conifer plantations, 79ha to grassland, 15 ha to arable and 120 ha to quarrying (Underhill-Day 2009: 10).
During the earlier part of the twentieth century, substantial parts of the heathlands were commonly referred to as being grasslands, such was the absence of iconic vegetation characteristic of heathlands: gorse and heather. These grasslands were created by vigorous swaling, whose aim was to create suitable browse for animals. Unlike Hardy's Egdon (Dorset) Heath (see Chapter 12), the area was still valuable to local Commoners with grazing rights in this respect, and so not entirely economically obsolete. After the Second World War the heathlands changed again, from being predominantly grasslands over large areas to being covered in a dense mantle of gorse and heather, the kind of heathland seen today. Thus the visual and sensory experience of the heath substantially altered.

Carter's excavation photographs from the 1930s show a remarkable absence of heathland vegetation: hardly a gorse bush or heather clump in sight (see Figure 2.6; Figure 2.15). Despite agricultural improvements and substantial intakes of land, most of the heathland was never subject to any form of cultivation. The land was more or less useless to those who owned it, the Clinton family, and it remains part of their estate. Substantial areas were planted with conifers between the 1920s and the 1960s to permit at least some kind of long-term economic return. These breaks of dense conifers quite literally broke up and divided what had previously been an entirely open landscape. It was now divided and visually fragmented.

The story of the heathlands from the mid-twentieth century onwards is the extinguishment of Commoners' rights and the presence of grazing animals on the heathlands. Today there is only one registered Commoner left, who does not exercise grazing rights. Animal grazing of the heaths effectively stopped during the Second World War. There was a general agricultural abandonment of the heathlands. Following this the grassland landscape was rapidly transformed, with the encroachment of scrub and bracken in some areas and the development of a fairly uniform and dense cover of mature gorse and heather.

During the 1950s and up until the end of the 1980s, little management of the heathland vegetation took place except in the newly established Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) Aylesbeare and Harpford nature reserve in the northern part of the heathlands, rented from the Clinton estate. What had once been a working part of a wider rural landscape, integrated into a pastoral economy, was gradually turned to other uses. It became a landscape used for quarrying pebbles, intensive military training, for leisure activities by the general public and one in which an environmental conservation agenda arose. The heath was worth preserving because it had become a threatened landscape.
Management of the heaths accordingly shifted from viewing them primarily as an economic resource to looking after them for leisure and wildlife conservation. In the absence of animal grazing, other means of scrub clearance, such as machine cutting, were introduced to keep the heaths open and to prevent them regenerating to woodland, a constant and uphill struggle, while swaling was still undertaken but on a far more limited scale.

The heathlands remain ‘taskscapes’ for those few who still work in them: people at the quarries, foresters, the Royal Marines who train there, environmental conservation managers and volunteers and archaeologists. But for the vast majority of people this is now a leisurescape used for walking, horse-riding, fishing, flying model aircraft on a designated field, mountain biking and other activities.

## Quarrying pebbles

During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries there were numerous small-scale and shallow quarries across the heathlands providing building materials for local villages and farms (Chapter 13). The pebbles quarried in the eighteenth and nineteenth century and taken away by pony and cart were for local use and local communities. They were used as found, as pebbles.

It was not until the early twentieth century that much larger operations began at Rockbeare Hill, Venn Ottery and Black Hill, where the exploitable pebble deposits reach their maximum depth of up to 30 m. Black Hill quarry was first operated in the early 1930s by the hand-digging of pebbles and their breaking to create road macadam. These operations were rapidly mechanized with the installation of a crushing plant, and the quarry had its heyday from the 1950s until the 1990s, during which it developed into a huge industrial operation (Figure 14.1; Figure 14.2). A massive extension of 57 ha was granted to the original quarrying concession in the early 1970s. The quarry produced 320,000 tonnes per annum in 2008. Quarrying operations eventually ceased at Black Hill in 2011 in tandem with the reopening and extension of the disused quarry at Venn Ottery, last worked in the 1970s, and the pebbles from there are still transported to Black Hill in huge lorries for crushing.

The quarries now produce sand and aggregates for making ready-mixed concrete and building materials and high-quality chippings for the surface dressing of roads, supplied throughout Devon and as far away as Sussex. Quarrying operations involve the machine-digging of the pebble
<figure><img src="image_211.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 14.1** Black Hill quarry in the 1960s. Photograph courtesy of Aggregate Industries</figcaption></figure>

<figure><img src="image_212.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 14.2** Black Hill quarry in July 2010 (Source: author)</figcaption></figure>
deposits down to 5 m above the water table, up to about 25 m, the separation of sand and silt waste from the pebbles using water and the crushing of the pebbles to various sizes and grades, which are then stockpiled in huge dumps for future use. Besides the crushing plant at Black Hill there are huge silt collecting ponds, pipelines and pumps feeding 60,000 gallons of clean water to the plant per hour and removing the silty waste (Figure 14.2). The grit produced from the crushed quartzite pebbles is extremely hard-wearing and ideal as a surface road dressing.

The people working in the aggregates industry have a practical and rational interest in the pebbles as hard-wearing and useful construction materials. The work inevitably entails both the destruction of the heathland itself and its pebbles. We have seen that this crushing and destruction of pebbles first took place at Jacob's Well 3,600 years earlier, with the end result of those activities looking remarkably similar to the larger-grade sizes of the pebbles crushed today in the Black Hill quarry. It is also interesting to note that these pebbles are being processed only a few hundred metres away from Jacob's Well. The motivations for pebble crushing are, of course, markedly different, reflecting a change in how pebbles are valued, from being a symbolic to becoming a utilitarian resource. But the later 'rational' use of pebbles also has its origins in prehistory. Pebbles were just a ready-to-hand building material, and were used for the construction of the ramparts of Woodbury Castle in the Iron Age about 2,500 years ago.

Their functional use for building walls and paths, house foundations, paving farmyards and roads continued from then into the twentieth century, until pebbles became functionally redundant as useful building materials, to be replaced by mass-produced brick and concrete. Their most recent twentieth- and twenty-first-century use for building has been as purely decorative and aesthetically pleasing materials. This contemporary appreciation of pebbles has its prehistoric parallels in the construction of the Early Bronze Age pebble cairns 4,000 years ago.

## The Royal Marines and the heathland

As we have seen in Chapter 11, the heathlands have had a long recent use for over 200 years as a military training area. This has provided some historical legitimacy for its continued use in this manner, despite the heathlands now being regarded as an important area for nature conservation, in which a military presence disturbing wildlife might seem undesirable.
But there is a huge difference between the small-scale and intermittent historical use of the heathlands by the military and the manner in which it is used today, which, by comparison, has had a massive impact on the landscape. Its historical occupation and use was both sporadic and temporary, lasting only a matter of days, weeks or months. The most intensive period was during the Napoleonic wars, 1799–1815. Today it is intensively used on a daily basis throughout the year as the initial part of a rigorous training regime for recruits. A new troop of between 55 and 60 recruits start their training at the Commando Training Centre at Lympstone and go through the same course about every two weeks throughout the year. Allowing for holiday periods and so on, this means that the Royal Marines train about 20–24 troops of recruits a year, or about 1,200 to 1,400 soldiers, on the heath.

During the Second World War, a huge camp, Dalditch, was established on East Budleigh Common in the far south of the heathlands in 1941. It initially consisted of tents, subsequently replaced by Nissen huts. This camp covered a large area about 1.7 km long and 0.8 km wide in maximum extent, housed around 5,000 men in 378 12-man huts and contained a further 107 huts for offices, stores, workshops, etc. (Perrett 1986: 24). The camp had a cinema, dining halls and galleys of 250-man capacity, recreation huts, a parade ground and a rifle range. Today most has been bulldozed and has returned to heath and scrub. Only four of the original buildings remain, including three decontamination blocks, converted into bat houses, and part of the rifle range walls. Brick and concrete foundations of many of the other structures still survive. According to some contemporary accounts, Dalditch was a hell-hole, with whole companies of men going down regularly with dysentery for a week at a time, an affliction known as ‘the Dalditch dog’ in the insanitary conditions that prevailed.

Another area of the heathland that was extensively used during the Second World War was the summit area of Aylesbeare Common. A concealed concrete and brick bunker was built a few hundred metres to the northwest of and down-slope from the summit cairn (now used as a bat house by the RSPB). The summit area itself served as a decoy site with lights for Exeter airport. The large circular structures discussed in Chapter 11 post-dating the remains of Simcoe’s late eighteenth- or early nineteenth-century military camp are probably part of the decoy. For example, it was common to create roughly circular ditched and/or banked enclosures, either as a fire break for controlled fire apparatus, or to fire the ditch to create the impression of a burning oil tank (information from an anonymous reviewer).
The area sloping down to Hawkerland south of the A3052 had extensive military use by Allied troops and large amounts of redundant military equipment is reputed to be buried somewhere here. Traces of this recent military activity and subsequent use of the area for training by the Royal Marines litter the summit area and that to the south, including numerous bullet casings, grenade shells, perishing bits of rubber and various dumps of modern material. RAF wartime aerial photographs show a fairly devastated heathland. It seems likely that the pebble platforms near to the summit that Carter had excavated (see Chapter 7) only two years before the outbreak of the war in 1939, and probably left uncovered and unprotected, were destroyed at that time.

Elsewhere – and almost anywhere if one removes the heathland mantle of vegetation – traces of military use are abundant. During the course of our archaeological survey and excavations it became apparent to us that even the slightest of the prehistoric cairns had proved to be useful to the Royal Marines for military training, as places to hide behind and for practice firing, not just the larger and more monumental cairns. The Royal Marines would not have recognized them as being anything other than irregularities in the land surface that could be made use of.

On the surface of Little Tor Cairn after vegetation cover was removed and prior to excavation we found over 70 brass bullet casings, some dating back to the 1960s. The presence of so much hidden metal has one unintended archaeological benefit. It makes the heathlands fruitless territory for contemporary metal detecting enthusiasts. About 100 m to the south of Tor Cairn there are military trenches, easy to fall into today when concealed by dense gorse and heather. Only a few metres to the southwest of Twin Cairn A there is another military trench. Yet another in an area now replete with hundreds of part infilled or now sunken trenches runs up right to the edge of the south side of Carter's Woodbury ε cairn. It was not there in 1930 when he undertook his excavations. At that time the heathland had not been mutilated by pits, mounds and trenches.

The Royal Marines, following the establishment of another camp at Lympstone during the Second World War, have continued to train on the heathlands since then, a period of 70 years. The heathland for them constitutes an ideal training area for recruits because of its proximity to their training centre and its varied topography of high points, steep-sided valleys, bogs and wooded areas. The presence of the thick spiky gorse through which they crawl at night, together with pebbles, makes it a suitably arduous and rigorous place to train. The Royal Marines have