I’ve had a long love affair with hillforts. Most weekends as far back as I can remember, we would have a family walk and picnic, driving excitedly past the Hillsborough football ground, along the tree-lined Rivelin Valley, past the brooding, dark shapes of Stanage Edge, along the Hope Valley and up through Castleton to park under the then, driveable road below Mam Tor.
This is where it all started for me, scrambling on all fours up the steep, eastern, shaley path to the top of this great Bronze and Iron Age hillfort. It is literally a ‘motherhill -‘ mam’ ‘tor’ and I was captivated by its enveloping arms as a small child. It was a long, hard slog to reach the summit with little legs but I loved standing on those huge ramparts looking down at the landscape around me, imagining what it must have been like to live up there thousands of years ago. I knew it had been lived on, the information boards told me so, but also I could just somehow ‘feel’ the people still living there. Not in a fearful way at all, but in a comforting way, knowing that I was walking in the footsteps of those who came before me on this land.
I carried on that love of hillforts in my early twenties, moving further north to Ingleborough, forming another strong connection to this distinctive and magnificent peak when I was living and working near the Dale’s in my first teaching job. Then came the majestic hillforts of Cumbria, Castle How, Castle Crag and Dunmallard, explored with the older stone circles whilst working as an outdoor instructor in the Lake District. A pattern was emerging for me. These ancient places of human dwelling were where I felt most at home.
And so when I found myself at thirty, moving to live in Shropshire, it wasn’t long before I was wiggling my way up Caer Caradoc, the Wrekin and the Brown Clee. I started with the biggest of course, because I loved hills and mountains and walking upon them. But seeking out the ones with hillforts upon them now became something of a compulsion for me, because they became so keenly familiar with each visit, my ‘familiars’, my ‘family’ in fact, and through my developing relationship with them, they made me feel at home here, in a place that for me, felt very much ‘south’ of my comfort zone.
Twenty-seven years later, I’m still here, walking these Shropshire hills, but over the last few years, I’ve been on a particular mission to visit and get to know all of Shropshire’s hillforts. I thought I already knew most of them but, of course, I didn’t at all. I didn’t know just how many there were, or what I’d got myself into, or what treasures I would find there and how the land and memories of the ancient Cornovii tribe here would affect me… and it’s been quite a journey.
What happened to me as I began writing this book came as something of a surprise. It could have easily turned out as a walking guide and history book, but instead, it shifted quickly into something else altogether. I was beginning a love affair with the land and place I found myself living in. In truth, I had always resisted accepting that I would finally settle here, as the urge to return ‘north’ had never quite left me. But the landscape had other plans for me, and the hills, the trees, the animals that I encountered and the voices and stories whispering to me on my journeys urged me to look more closely, to listen more carefully and to dream this land in other ways. Most of these sites are hidden, well off the beaten track, still existing in other time zones and I often found myself slipping and shifting with them, with plenty of opportunities to daydream and time travel.
My obsession with hillforts and the people, our ancestors on this land led me on a journey of discovery. Each place had its own identity like each child is different even when from the same parents. Each place felt individual and had a distinctive atmosphere but were intrinsically inter-connected too and inexplicably linked to each other, and slowly I began to feel part of that ancient tribe of Cornovii, part of the land and part of nature. My visits felt like clandestine encounters with the wild, my lover was the natural world in all its glory. Eye to eye with deer and hares and ravens and kites…these close encounters with birds and animals left me breathless and humbled and exhilarated in turn. I am just another animal sharing this space and I was now the oddity to be stared at, outnumbered and encumbered by my human trappings of modernity.
And at the end of all that searching and that pilgrimage of service to nature, I looked around at the landscape with fresh eyes and saw all-time still alive around me. It was an unexpected and overwhelming reward.
If you are looking to open up a relationship with the place you find yourself living in, seek out the old places, seek out the plants, seek out the trees, seek out the creatures that dwell there – go out and talk to them and ask questions and listen carefully to what they say. You will find beauty, you will find memories, you might even just find yourself. If you’re really lucky, you will, like me, find home.
‘I’m standing on top of the Wrekin looking back at the distinctive sculpted peak of Caer Caradoc, twenty six years have now passed since I first walked up it. For once, there is no wind, though the temperature is dropping fast as the day gives way to dusk. We’re approaching the Winter Solstice and the last light of a low winter sun illuminates the sky in a burst of colour and cloud shape more magnificent than any grandmaster painting. It’s almost too beautiful to take in. I stand above the Needle’s Eye and stretch my mind out over the landscape like the tendrils of a plant reaching back to Wenlock Edge where I now live and beyond it to the many hillforts I’ve visited; The Clee Hills, Nordy Bank, The Mogg, Ebury Hill, Chesterton Walls, Caynham Camp, Coxall Knoll, Castle Ring, Burrow Hill, Norton Camp, Wart Hill, Bury Ditches, Radnor Wood, Caen Din Ring, Earl’s Hill, Castle Ring, Bodbury Ring, Old Oswestry, Nescliffe, The Berth, Haughmond Hill, on and on, too many to name. I see them all clearly in my mind now from my walks to each one. I see the people of the Cornovii tribe making their homes and living in this Shropshire landscape. They have become part of me and of my story too. Fires are lit in each hearth, people sit around them, singing, drumming, sharing stories, sharing time, alive again and tangible to me now from the top of this great capital portal.’. The ending of the book.
All the black and white photographs are taken from my book. Paul Evans, (nature writer and author of Herbaceous, Field Notes From The Edge and The Guardian Country Diary), has described ‘Finding Home’ as ‘archaeology of the soul’ and I certainly bared mine in the writing of this book. You can buy my book on the Etsy link below:
https://www.etsy.com/shop/WolfwordsShop
Or contact me directly on my WordPress site or at wolfwordsandcrowspeak.com
wolf words and crow speak 