And did those feet?

And did those feet in ancient time, walk upon England's mountains green? You bet they did, and they left plenty of traces of their passing by too. England's quite small really, so it's no surprise that the landscape is so abundant in the relics of foregone times. Again today we found ourselves walking the rural byways of Dorset and as if to perfectly illustrate my opening statement, through time. We parked up at the Kingston Lacy end of the 700 tree Beech Avenue created in 1835; past the Bronze Age round barrows of King Down (above); on past a really rare Romano-British barrow (35m diameter and 6m high, surrounded by a partially filled ditch); on past the architecturally fantastic farm buildings of Hemsworth with it's origins in the 16th century; past the earthen remains of a an earlier medieval settlement, listed as Hemedeswordes in the Doomsday Book; past the site of a 4th Century Roman Villa famed for it's fine mosaics; past woodland hiding the foundations of wartime accommodation; across the World War Two airfield of Tarrant Rushton from where, on D-Day, the gliders took off for the famous attack on Pegasus Bridge, the first allied troop in occupied Europe; along the Ackling Dyke Roman Road; below the ramparts of the majestic Iron Age hillfort of the Durotriges, Badbury Rings; and finally back to where we began. And that doesn't take into account the history I don't know, or that which remains hidden. A real walk through time I'm sure you'd agree.    

Living history

My archaeologist/historian mind has frequently had me wondering what it must have been like living through different transformative moments in history. Sat on the site of the Medieval hunting lodge close to Queen's Bower this morning it dawned on me that I'm getting the opportunity to actually live through one such moment in history, or to be more accurate, a clusterfuck of such moments. The escalating climate crisis, deepening global economic crisis, the rise of populism, and separatism, social decay and an increasing frequency of epidemics and pandemics; that's quite a menu of moments. It's through our own agency too, we've brought ourselves to this moment, all the seed problems we've planted are all blooming spectacularly at once, in real time. The question is, will we make it to become history, or are we writing the final chapter?

Corfe

Corfe Castle, gateway to Purbeck, tucked quietly away on the Dorset coast, though a castle which crops up again and again in the national story. In it's day it was regarded as one of the most tenacious of castles in the country, founded by William the Conqueror, it served at different times as a home, a weapons store, a prison and a mint, as a royal stronghold it withstood sieges in both civil wars, and never fell in battle, finally falling to treachery and subsequently slighted by order of parliament.  It is the most archetypal and romantic of ruined medieval castles.