Out & About
A pause for thought Alan Tutt steps back in time on his visit to the Iron Age hill fort, Warham Camp
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OMETIMES you can sit in a deserted landscape and keenly imagine what it would have been like to live there several thousand years ago. One such spot is the Iron Age hill fort of Warham Camp, which lies south of the North Norfolk village of Warham, hidden in an anonymous field, just offcentre from the Stiffkey-Wells coast road. There are a handful of such forts in Norfolk - Thetford, Holkham, Narborough and South Creake - but the best preserved and most atmospheric, is Warham. The others are all to a greater or lesser degree, disadvantaged: Thetford merges into its medieval castle, South Creake ploughed to near extinction, Narborough submerged by woods and Holkham swallowed up by salt marsh. Warham Camp dominates its position and, when newly built, the uncovered white chalk would have shimmered provocatively in the sunlight, the watching warriors on its parapets scanning the horizon for foes, daring them to challenge its supreme position. Though a little off the beaten track, the fort is free for the public to access. Go south from The Three Horseshoes Inn in Warham, over a small bridge, then right, through a gate, over a stile, down an overgrown footpath, laden with blackberries and other hedgerow fruits when I visited at summer’s end, another stile and, breathtakingly, there it lies.
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NORTH NORFOLK LIVING AUTUMN 2016
The two concentric earthwork ramparts with a heart of chalk rubble, and their related deeply dug ditches remain impressive, though flattened a little by time. There would have been wooden platforms and a palisade for enemies to contend with too. Originally it would have been completely circular but it is now a horseshoe shape, intersected by the River Stiffkey on its way to meet the sea between Stiffkey and Morston. The river was diverted from its natural course several hundred years ago. An 18th century map shows the fort ring intact. This defensive outcrop stares intimidatingly out across the valley, commanding 360° elevated views across a vista barely changed in millennia. The ‘camp’ lies close to a barrow, or burial mound, named Fiddler’s Hill, and is known locally and affectionately as Danish Camp, perhaps a folk memory of a sort, that the fort was reoccupied and reused by the Viking invaders in their British incursions. Roman pottery fragments and detritus have been found in and around the site, so they were here as well, way before the Norsemen. Many holm oaks grow, though not as plentiful as the rabbits the Romans brought with them. There is speculation that the Iceni were in occupation. The story of Boudica is a brave but tragic one. Her sack of Camulodunum (modern Colchester), Verulamium (St Albans) and
Londinium brought brutal Roman retribution. Perhaps Warham was abandoned after Boudica’s defeat and annihilation by Suetonius, the Roman governor of Britain, at The Battle of Watling Street, marking the end of her tribal uprising in AD61. Fast-forward to today and the site is a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI), with chalk grasslands providing a home for wildflowers, insects and butterflies, a mecca for nature lovers. If you time it right, you could see species including chalkhill blue and brown argus butterflies, common rock-roses, pyramidal orchids, large wild thyme and quaking grass. I return on an autumnal day, a hoar frost lies over this exposed site, the memory of a summer picnic now faded, like the dead peoples of the past. The raking low light is unearthly and it’s still a special place to absorb history. I kick over a molehill in the hope of a potsherd, to no avail. Warham remains a peaceful and evocative place whose significance we may never fully know. Perhaps future archaeology will uncover more secrets. It is certainly well worth preserving, a rare place, where one can find tranquillity in a helterskelter modern world. • Aerial Photography by Drift Media Ltd, www.driftmedia.co.uk