Creech Hill is a hill in south east
Somerset, England, which is notable for a
univallate Iron Age hill fort. The hill is situated approximately north west of the small town of
Bruton.
Hill fort
The hill fort is at the northern end of Creech Hill, near the village of
Milton Clevedon
Milton Clevedon is a village and civil parish south of Evercreech in the Mendip District, Mendip district of Somerset, England.
History
The name of the village means the middle settlement, possibly because it is halfway between Evercreech and ...
. It is a
Scheduled Ancient Monument.
Hill forts developed in the Late Bronze and Early Iron Age, roughly the start of the
first millennium BC. The reason for their emergence in Britain, and their purpose, has been a subject of debate. It has been argued that they could have been military sites constructed in response to invasion from continental Europe, sites built by invaders, or a military reaction to social tensions caused by an increasing population and consequent pressure on agriculture. The dominant view since the 1960s has been that the increasing use of iron led to social changes in Britain. Deposits of iron ore were located in different places to the tin and copper ore necessary to make bronze, and as a result trading patterns shifted and the old elites lost their economic and social status. Power passed into the hands of a new group of people. Archaeologist
Barry Cunliffe
Sir Barrington Windsor Cunliffe, (born 10 December 1939), known as Barry Cunliffe, is a British archaeologist and academic. He was Professor of European Archaeology at the University of Oxford from 1972 to 2007. Since 2007, he has been an Emeri ...
believes that population increase still played a role and has stated "
he forts
He or HE may refer to:
Language
* He (pronoun), an English pronoun
* He (kana), the romanization of the Japanese kana へ
* He (letter), the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets
* He (Cyrillic), a letter of the Cyrillic script called ''He'' in ...
provided defensive possibilities for the community at those times when the stress
f an increasing population
F, or f, is the sixth letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''ef'' (pronounced ), and the plural is ''efs''.
Hist ...
burst out into open warfare. But I wouldn't see them as having been built because there was a state of war. They would be functional as defensive strongholds when there were tensions and undoubtedly some of them were attacked and destroyed, but this was not the only, or even the most significant, factor in their construction".
Roman temple
Lamyatt Beacon marks the highest area of the hill, and is the site of a
Romano-Celtic temple
A Romano-Celtic temple (more specifically a Romano-British temple in Great Britain, or Gallo-Roman temple in the Continental region formerly comprising Gaul) is a sub-class of Roman temple found in the north-western provinces of the Roman Empire. ...
, which was in use from 250 AD to 375 AD.
Folklore
According to the folklorist
Katharine Briggs, Creech Hill is said to be haunted by a
ghost
A ghost is the soul or spirit of a dead person or animal that is believed to be able to appear to the living. In ghostlore, descriptions of ghosts vary widely from an invisible presence to translucent or barely visible wispy shapes, to rea ...
known as the Bullbeggar. From traditions collected by
Ruth Tongue
Ruth Lyndall Tongue (7 February 1898 – 19 September 1981) was a British storyteller and writer who published several collections of folklore and various articles.
Biography
Ruth Tongue was born in Handsworth. She was the third and youngest chi ...
in 1906 and published in ''County Folklore'' (vol. 8) she recounts how in the 1880s two bodies had been dug up during quarrying operations. Afterward the hill became haunted by a "black uncanny shape" and unseen footsteps. A farmer coming home late one night saw a figure lying in the road and approached to offer help, whereupon it suddenly got up and chased him all the way to his own door. His family ran to his rescue and saw the figure bounding away with wild laughter. Another traveller at night was attacked on Creech Hill and defended himself from midnight to morning with the help of a staff made of ash.
[Briggs, Katharine (1976). ''An Encyclopedia of Fairies''. Pantheon Books. p. 52. .]
See also
*
List of hillforts and ancient settlements in Somerset
Somerset is a ceremonial county in South West England. It is a rural county of rolling hills, such as the Mendip Hills, Quantock Hills and Exmoor National Park, and large flat expanses of land including the Somerset Levels. Modern man came to ...
References
{{reflist
Hills of Somerset
Hill forts in Somerset
Scheduled monuments in Mendip District