Wimble Toot is a burial mound or, possibly, a motte built near the village of

Babcary Babcary is a village and civil parish in Somerset, England, about east of Somerton and southwest of Castle Cary, in the South Somerset district. The village has a population of 248. It lies close to the River Cary and the A37. The parish incl ...

Somerset ( en, All The People of Somerset) , locator_map = , coordinates = , region = South West England , established_date = Ancient , established_by = , preceded_by = , origin = , lord_lieutenant_office =Lord Lieutenant of Somerset , lord_ ...

, England. It is a scheduled ancient monument with a list entry number of 1015279.

Etymology

''Toot'' is derived from

Old English Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, Anglo ...

''tōt'', meaning a lookout point.Barker 1986, p. 20.

Details

Wimble Toot is generally interpreted as a typical bowl barrow dating to the

Bronze Age The Bronze Age is a historic period, lasting approximately from 3300 BC to 1200 BC, characterized by the use of bronze, the presence of writing in some areas, and other early features of urban civilization. The Bronze Age is the second pri ...

,Historic England 2017. between 2600 and 700 BC.Historic England 2015. Today the site forms a circular earthwork, across and high, with a ditch on the north-west and south-east sides, on the top of a ridge, overlooking a brook which runs into the

River Cary The River Cary is a river in Somerset, England. It is sourced from the Park Pond in Castle Cary and flows towards the southwest. Etymology The origin of the name ''Cary'' is uncertain. It may be derived from pre-Celtic ''kar-'', meaning "stony, ...

and the old

Roman road Roman roads ( la, viae Romanae ; singular: ; meaning "Roman way") were physical infrastructure vital to the maintenance and development of the Roman state, and were built from about 300 BC through the expansion and consolidation of the Roman Re ...

of the

Fosse Way The Fosse Way was a Roman road built in Britain during the first and second centuries AD that linked Isca Dumnoniorum (Exeter) in the southwest and Lindum Colonia (Lincoln) to the northeast, via Lindinis (Ilchester), Aquae Sulis ( Bath), Corini ...

.
Wimble Toot
', National Monuments Record, accessed 19 July 2011; Prior, p.92. The site is of an undetermined age, and appears to have been a part of the Romano-British landscape. In Roman times, Wimble Toot was situated at a crossroads. An alternative interpretation is that the monument is a possible motte built between 1067 and 1069. According to this view, Wimble Toot was probably built by the Norman lord

Robert of Mortain Robert, Count of Mortain, 2nd Earl of Cornwall (–) was a Norman nobleman and the half-brother (on their mother's side) of King William the Conqueror. He was one of the very few proven companions of William the Conqueror at the Battle of Hasti ...

to protect the River Cary and the nearby settlement of Ilchester. Today the site is a

scheduled monument In the United Kingdom, a scheduled monument is a nationally important archaeological site or historic building, given protection against unauthorised change. The various pieces of legislation that legally protect heritage assets from damage and d ...

.
Wimble Toot, Babcary
', Gatehouse website, accessed 19 July 2011.

References

*Barker, Katherine (1986)
Pen, Ilchester and Yeovil: A Study in the Landscape History and Archaeology of South-East Somerset
. ''Proceedings of the Somerset Archaeology and Natural History Society''. Volume 130, pp. 11-45. Taunton, Somerset: Somerset Archaeology and Natural History Society. *Historic England (2015)
Pastscape: Wimble Toot
'. Swindon, Wiltshire, UK: Historic England. Accessed 2017-11-15. *Historic England (2017)
Bowl barrow known as 'Wimble Toot'
'. Swindon, Wiltshire, UK: Historic England. Accessed 2017-11-15. *Prior, Stuart. (2006)
The Norman Art of War: a Few Well-Positioned Castles.
' Stroud, UK: Tempus. {{ISBN, 0-7524-3651-1.

Etymology

Details

References

References

Further reading