Initial Phase 1 Survey results and scrub clearance.

Now a second phase is planned to study this target in more detail. Dave Larkin (pictured to the right of John Funnel) from Brighton and Hove City Council has been kind enough to include scrub in the vicinity of the traget area within this winters clearance programme.

Initial analysis of results from the Phase 1 geophysical survey has revealed areas of interest within the Hillfort interior. One target area appears to be a square structure within the central plateau of the fort. While this may well be a Romano-British Shrine, it could also quite easily be the Napoleonic Beacon Hut, WW1 Training Trenches or a geological anomaly.

Hollingbury Geophysical Survey

Brighton and Hove Archaeology Society and Matthew Pope (UCL) co-organised a geophysical survey of part of the interior of Hollingbury Hillfort. The survey, undertaken under licence from English Heritage, was intended to identify any structures assciated with the previously identified internal pallisade.


Results of on-going analysis of results will be published here.

Sarsens at Hollingbury?

"One word in conclusion, on those earthworks to which I have alluded as, in my opinion, possessing strong claims to be considered of Druidical origin. I refer to the earthworks of Cauburn (sic) and Whitehawk Hill. Others may have possessed similar pretensions, and more particularly Hollingbury, in the vallum and within the inclosure of which portions of Druidical stones are still to be found; and at the southern most of its two western portae, the remains of an upright stone of this kind still stands, projecting a little above the sod, precisely in the position of the two stones at Stonehenge. "

from Turner, E. 1850 Military Earthworks of the Southdowns with a more enlarged Account of Cissbury, one of the principal of them. Sussex Archaeological Collections Volume 3: 173-184.

Well I don't buy a megalithic monument at Hollingbury for a second but the presence of (presumably) sarsens stones on the hill is interesting. They could have naturally occurred there, the hill being capped with remnant Tertiary deposits, they could well have been included in the fabric of the hillfort. What is clear is that nothing remains of the stones now, unless some lie recumbant beneath the turf, a fact unlikely given the thin soil depth. As with the supposed megalithcs at Church Hill and barrows at Whitehawk they remain a mystery, a part of Brighton's lost prehistory.

Hollingbury at the ADS

Hollingbury Hillfort also has a place at the Archaeology Data Service site

Modern Antiquarian

April 2005 Hollingbury Hillfort now has its very own presence on Julian Copes very impressive Modern Antiquarian Site. http://www.themodernantiquarian.com/site/7224.

Second Summer

David Bangs and Peter Russel have just published the results of their survey of downland fungi from the Brighton area. This survey includes an acount of the fungi of Hollingbury, which as part of a relic chalk heath with a rich variety of waxcaps. You download the survey by clicking here.

Fly-through

RangerVisualisations have produced a fly-past for Brighton which includes a low-level pass of Hollingbury Hillfort. This movie takes us on a journey up the Lewes Road Valley, then turning west into Stanmer Park to join the Ditchling Road ridge. The viewer then turns to the south, passing Old Boat Corner and Hollingbury Hillfort. The remainder of the flight passes the Hollingdean 'Dip', Brighton Round Hill and the Steyne before flying out over a flooded Pool Valley. The team at RV have reconstructed a stripped-down deforested landscape typical of a late-glacial summer 12,000 years ago.

Click: http://matt.pope.users.btopenworld.com/RangerVisual/hollin1.swf to fly