Dowsborough Camp (or Danesborough or Dawesbury) is an Iron Age hill fort on the Quantock Hills near Nether Stowey in Somerset, England. It has been designated as a Scheduled Monument. The fort and associated round barrow has been added to the Heritage at Risk Register due to vulnerability to vehicle damage and erosion.
Situation
The site is at a height of 1115' (340 metres) on an easterly spur from the main Quantock ridge, with views north to the
Bristol Channel, and east over the valley of the
River Parrett.
The fort has an oval shape, with a single rampart and ditch (
univallate) following the contours of the hill top, enclosing an area of 6¾ acres (2.7 hectares).
The main entrance is to the east, towards
Nether Stowey, with a simpler opening to the north-west, aligned with a ridgeway leading down to Holford. The Lady's Fountain springs are in the
valley to the west. A
Mountain pass
to the south connects the hill to the main Stowey ridge, where a linear earthwork known as Dead Woman's Ditch cuts across the spur. This additional rampart would have provided an extra line of defence against attack from the main Quantock ridge to the west, and it could have been a tribal boundary.
Saxon era
In Saxon times,
King Alfred's military road, the
Herepath, ran up from
Combwich, Cannington (a possible site of the Battle of Cynwit) and
Over Stowey, along the present course of the Stowey road, across Dead Woman's Ditch to Crowcombe Park Gate, south along the main ridge of the Quantocks to Triscombe Stone, then west across the valley to the
Brendon Hills and
Exmoor.
[ Dumnonia and the Valley of the Parret, Rev. W.H.P. Greswell (1922)] The road connected a series of forts and lookout posts, which allowed Alfred's armies to move along the coast to cover
Viking movements at sea and forestall any raids ashore.
The path from Dowsborough to the Herepath is called
Great Bear Path, and this is taken to be a corruption of
Great Herepath, which suggests that Dowsborough could have been a Saxon lookout over the
Bristol Channel.
See also
Further reading
-
A Field Guide to Somerset Archaeology, Lesley and Roy Adkins (1992)
External links