Man the barricades!

Someone's thrown up a ramshackle barricade of boughs and branches blocking the causeway into Mistleberry Enclosure, not that it matters though, the bank and ditch don't make a full circuit, so the obstacle is easily circumnavigated and the bank is far from insurmountable anyway. Also known as Mistleberry Fort, the site is described by the RCHME as an unfinished hillfort, though you know, I'm not so sure.  Mistleberry appears to be too small to be a fort, and the shape doesn't seem work either, I think it was possibly a defended settlement, maybe, or something else...the prehistorian in me would obviously suggest 'ritual' (archaeology joke).  Doing a geophys survey of the interior would shed some light, I reckon. Anyway, I digress. Someone's thrown up a ramshackle barricade of boughs and branches blocking the causeway into Mistleberry Enclosure...I don't know what that's about.

MIstleberry enclosure

MIstleberry enclosure in Mistleberry Wood near Sixpenny Handley in the Chase, recorded as an Iron Age Hillfort, and I'd suggest a misclassification. A lovely spot though. It’s certainly an enclosure of some kind, although with such slight ditches and ramparts (which are hardly defencive) and its open ended oval shape, and tapering in depth, width and height earthen features, I don't believe it's a hillfort. So what might it be? Maybe it could possibly be an unfinished hillfort (although it's not that big), a defended farmstead, or communal corral or meeting place maybe, or is it the prehistorians go to, and my particular favourite, a ritual site.  I don't know. I don't know if much or any research has been undertaken, beyond the cursory site visit by the Historic Monuments commission sometime early/middle last century leading to its classification. A desk top investigation might be a nice little project.