BLOODGATE HILL, SOUTH CREAKE IRON AGE HILLFORT, near Fakenham (TF848353)

Iron Age hillforts in Norfolk

“Bloodgate” is actually the name for the road which runs past the site, but its meaning is unknown. It may not anyway be the fort’s ancient name, because in the seventeenth century the fort was just known as “Burgh Dykes”, simply meaning “fort ditches”.

This is one of only five or six earthwork forts or “hillforts” in Norfolk known to have been built by the local Iron Age warrior tribes in the three or four hundred years before the Roman invasion. Five of the forts are certainly of this date. These are at South Creake, Warham, Narborough, Holkham and Thetford. There are other possible ones at Wighton, Bawsey and Tasburgh, but more excavations are needed on each of them before their dates can be determined. The Norfolk Archaeological Trust owns the Tasburgh fort, which is also open to the public.

Distribution map of Iron Age forts in Norfolk

The traditional interpretation of these sites is that they were heavily defended tribal centres either occupied permanently or at times of unrest. They may also have been ceremonial centres. Whatever their purpose, an immense amount of work was involved in their construction with ditches up to four metres deep, usually cut with difficulty through chalk, and with banks of a similar height inside. On top of the banks were wooden walkways and palisades, making quite formidable fortifications. Excavations in 1959 at Warham Camp, the best preserved of the forts, actually found the holes dug to hold this timberwork on top of the chalk bank.

The forts at South Creak and Warham were perfectly circular, but the others had more irregular shapes to fit the local topography. The Holkham fort was constructed in a very defendable position on an old sandspit, rather like Blakeney Point is today, with sea and salt marshes on three sides. The forts at Warham, Holkham and Thetford had a double bank and ditch, while those at South Creake, Narborough, and Tasburgh had just one line of defence.

The areas enclosed varied from 1.5 to 6 hectares. Their construction required an enormous amount of physical effort either by slave labour or by tribesmen keen to create these refuges at times of inter-tribal unrest. The interior may have been full of buildings and pens for horses and cattle brought in at times of warfare, but we don’t know for sure. Interpretation of fort interiors in the region will have to remain speculation until one has been subject to modern methods of extensive excavation. Nevertheless, a combination of air photography, geophysical survey and excavations of sections across the South Creake ditches has helped the Trust to interpret the layout of the interior in surprising detail.

Whether any of these forts were ever later actually defended against the Romans or whether the local people simply surrendered submissively in the end, we cannot say. As a group they are still the most impressive prehistoric monuments we have in the county.

Bloodgate Hill

An early seventeenth century parish map of South Creake shows the main defences, then known as “Burgh Dykes”, uncultivated and still preserved. The main entrance was visible on the east side, and the system of medieval cultivation strips remained within and around the fort. Later, when the first edition of the Ordnance Survey map was published in 1824, the earthworks still survived.

Seventeenth-century map of site

However, shortly after the Ordnance Survey surveyed the site, the local clergyman, the Rev. Bowman recorded in the South Creake Parish Register in 1827-8 that the “Bank of Burdyke encampment removed and set on land”, in other words it was levelled and the soil spread out on the land. This was during the age of agricultural improvement when old field systems over many parts of Britain were being swept away, obstructions removed, and larger fields with straight hedgerows were being created to suit new farming methods. These large rectangular fields can be seen all around the site today. After the earthworks were partly flattened the site was ploughed regularly until it was purchased by the Norfolk Archaeological Trust in 2003 and put down to permanent grass.

With cultivation in mind, it is interesting that in more recent times this farm was probably the first in Norfolk to dispose of all its horses and go over to tractors. In 1930 the farm tenancy was taken over by the Alley brothers who disposed of all 32 horses and replaced them with three tractors and reduced the number of men from 40 to four. Because of the interest this created at the time some, photographs of the new machines working on the farm survive.

One of the Alley brothers’ crawler tractor at work on or near the site in the early 1930s

As tractors became larger and more powerful in the 1970s and 1980s archaeologists took a number of aerial photographs of the field to monitor plough damage. When the field was bare of crops the light soil marks showed that freshly disturbed material from the banks was still being brought to the surface.

Air photo of the fort showing as soil marks

When the field was under growing crops the deeper soil in the circle of the outer defensive ditch, with its entrance on the east side, was very clear as a dark line, and so also was an inner circular near the centre of the fort.

Air photo of the site showing as crop marks

When the Trust took possession of the site after harvest in 2003 a geophysical survey of the whole fort was carried out, and again the inner circle showed up clearly, this time with an entrance on the east side exactly opposite the main fort gateway. Could they be contemporary, or was the inner ring earlier Bronze Age as most archaeologists had expected?

Photo of the geophysical survey in progress

Plan of the fort showing the results of the geophysical survey

In the 2003 excavations the inner circular ditch was sectioned. It was V-shaped in profile, just over 2.5 metres deep and contained Iron Age pottery at all levels in the ditch fill. So, there seemed no doubt that this was the same date as the fort, creating some form of inner sanctum or citadel not found elsewhere in Iron Age forts in lowland Britain.

Photo of the section dug across the inner circular ditch

In 2003 a section was also cut across the outer ditch to the north east. It was four metres deep, and had been re-cut once, and then allowed to silt naturally. Little traces of the bank could be found, but from near the bottom of the early fill of the ditch came a piece of cattle bone which has been radio-carbon dated to about 280 B.C. This suggests that the fort was constructed roughly three hundred years before the Romans occupied Britain in AD 43.

Photo of the section dug across the main ditch

Drawing of the layers in the main ditch, showing that the ditch was cleaned out, or re-cut, once.

Other features also emerged from the geophysical survey. There appeared to be two small entrances on the west side, forming a symmetrical plan with the main one to the east. Also, there were two rather irregular internal boundaries radiating from the inner circle to reach the main outer defences, thus forming a neat triangular area centred on a line between the main eastern entrance and the inner circle. This raises all sorts of possibilities about how the interior of the fort may have been divided up, and how the different parts of it were used. One possible layout is shown in the artist’s reconstruction of the fort, showing the triangle as primarily ceremonial.

Artist’s reconstruction of the fort interior

There are no plans to disturb the site by excavating it further for the moment, but the artist’s reconstruction could be used one day as a model in a carefully planned excavation to test theories about the layout of the interior. We can feel some satisfaction about how much we have learned using a programme of air photography, geophysical survey and only very limited excavation.

The two site interpretation panels

South Creake further reading

Davies, J. Gregory T., Lawson, A., Rickett, R. and Rogerson, A., 1991. “The Iron Age Forts of Norfolk”, East Anglian Archaeology 54.

Davies, J. and Williamson, T. (eds), 1999. The Land of the Iceni (Studies in East Anglia History 4).

Davies, J. 1996. “Where Eagles Dare; the Iron Age in Norfolk”, Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 62, 63-92.

Gregory, T., 1986. “Excavations at Thornham, Warham, Wighton and Caistor, Norfolk”, East Anglian Archaeology 30.

Gregory, T., 1992. “Excavations in Thetford, 1980-82, Fison Way”, East Anglian Arhaeology 53.

Robinson B. and Gregory T., 1987. Celtic Fire and Roman Rule.

Wade-Martins, P. (ed.), 1997. Norfolk from the Air, plates 12-15.

Note: The report of the 2003 geophysical survey and excavation by Kenneth Penn of the Norfolk Archaeological Unit will be published in Norfolk Archaeology in due course.