Penbury Knoll Camp

Penbury Knoll Camp is designated as an early prehistoric hillfort, with an irregular single rampart and ditch, and an interior suffering from later quarrying. I'll be honest, in it's present condition and scant visible remains (beyond a section of shallow ditch and slight bank), it's hard to see this site as a hillfort, it's very small too. It's definitely something prehistoric. There are several causeways across the visible shallow ditch, and I could see it being a causewayed enclosure, and interestingly there are good assemblages (from surface finds) of Mesolithic and Neolithic flint work from the knoll.  Nice spot, with some good vistas over the Chase and towards the New Forest, you can see why it would have been the focus of human activity.

Water Lilies

I thought how the 'Head' has changed over the years as I walked through memories and time there this morning.  It feels as if Hengistury Head has always featured in my life.  Childhood days out with kites, or Noddy Train rides and the beach.  A favoured adventure land in my young teens, skiving school, jumping the Noddy Train, being chased by the Noddy Train drivers as well as the first place I wild camped. It appeared much wilder then, it was much wilder then, more removed, that said, it's still wild-ish now. It became a different type of adventure land in my later teens, substances ensured that. It's always been somewhere I've walked too. When I worked in the engineers department at the local authority we'd survey the Head regularly to record the rate of erosion, it took a couple of days, and we did that a few times a year. Nice work as I remember. Halfway down the harbour face of the Head are ponds above the waste tips created by quarrying in previous centuries. These, now thriving wildlife ponds, used to be near lifeless murky puddles, in fact the whole landscape had a tangible post industrial feel to it as I remember, a bare nakedness beyond first colonisers and invasive flora. So many memories connected with this place, I'm connected with this place. And, I know I'm just one of many over the centuries to have felt that connection. Hengistbury Head has been the focus of human activity for millennia, 14,000 year ago Upper Palaeolithic hunters utilized the headland, as did the our Mesolithic ancestors, the Bronze Age saw the harbour developing and the promontory was a focus of Round Barrow burials, the Iron Age saw the harbour port continue to develop as an important centre for trade, this continued throughout the Roman period. Later centuries saw smuggling, quarrying and defence all feature, in-between long periods of pastoral obscurity. So I'm not just walking through my history, I'm walking through the history of the country, human and natural, and I just love that. 

Nuts are forming

I noticed my first hazelnuts this afternoon, and you know what it's like, once you notice one you notice them all and it appeared that many of the trees were amply covered. The foragers friend, high in protein, carbohydrates and un-saturated fat, along with ample vitamins and minerals, hazelnuts make for an important wild food resource which stores easily and well; there's evidence of wide scale collection and processing of hazelnuts in our island since the Mesolithic and no doubt they'd have been utilized for a long time before. It'll be awhile yet before I'm out collecting, though it's nice to see them coming along.

Pignuts

The woodland fringes and meadow edges where covered with Pignuts (Conopodium majus) in flower today, once a favourite with children who'd dig for the sweet tuber or 'nut' which is similar to a sweet chestnut or hazelnut, it has all but been forgotten now as children find themselves increasingly disenfranchised from their natural world and from playing outdoors. The nut can be quite hard to recover as it's located at the end of a fragile and twisting root, though when a fair sized example is recovered it's well worth the effort and makes for a tasty treat; care needs to be taken when chasing the nut, the stem as mentioned can twist and the nut may not be where you think it is and if you break the stem you efforts may end in failure. I'm always cautious of members of the Umbelliferae family as it contains some poisonous members and you can easily misidentify which is which, although only the Pignut forms a tuber of this sort. The photo above shows all the parts of the plant; their white umbel  flower, their much divided leaves, the developing seeds, the long winding root and tuber. These nuts have always been a collected food source, being identified from prehistoric contexts Mesolithic, Neolithic and Bronze Age; their continuation in folk tradition up until recent times is testament to their value as a food source. 

Hengistbury Head

The headland of Hengistbury Head has seen human activity since the Paleolithic, when reindeer hunters camped overlooking what was river deltas and plain, and is now the Solent. Later, Mesolithic, mobile hunter gathers, seasonly passed through exploiting the local resources; they were followed by local Bronze Age communities who buried their dead in mounds on the head.  As the Bronze Age gave way to the Iron Age, the double dyke defences were constructed and as the Iron Age progress the head became an important trading port. The head continued as important trading port throughout the Roman period. Little evidence remains of all these activities, other than the double dykes. Through the following centuries stone and iron loded stones were regularly quarried, leaving a deep scar across the headland.  During the Second World War the headland was taken over by the military; guns, radar and other defences turned the head into an important military installation, also extensive mines were deployed; clearance took some time and wasn't until the 1950's that most of the Second World War features were removed or destroyed, again leaving very little evidence. There are though the occasional signs of wartime activity, on the shoreline on the harbour side of the head are shattered remains of, what looks like, a defencive pillbox. On this piece above, one of the larger, you can easily make out one of the firing embrasures. Used for recreation now, it's impossible to know what the future holds for this well used headland.