--> YouTube-Generated Transcript <-- 0:02 · Britain used to be divided east and west by this I'm in a quite a substantial ditch here We've got 0:08 · a massive bank up to one side just there That'll tell us something important very shortly I'm sure 0:14 · But the best thing about this structure just have a look up the top of the bank here Okay So 0:20 · if I climb out of the ditch from this point I can see this heads in that direction south for quite 0:26 · some distance And if I can spin the camera around without dropping it well we head off to the north 0:33 · in that direction for quite some distance too Now broadly speaking I'm in the center of southern 0:37 · Britain Geographically well I'm splitting the west from the east So what exactly is going on here now 0:44 · if you like your history you've probably heard of a few historic walls in Britain Hadrian's wall in 0:49 · the north the Antonine wall even further north and maybe even Offers Dyke and Wansdykes in the early 0:56 · to Middle Ages Well now we have another to add to that list Of course it was already on the list but 1:03 · looking at the sheer scale and size of this one the direction well I feel it's quite important 1:07 · that we talk about it and we try and understand who constructed it what were they doing were they 1:12 · protecting the west from the east perhaps how long was it so many questions And maybe those questions 1:18 · will help us try and understand the history at the time Welcome to the story of the Bockerley Dyke 1:30 · dyke Okay So what exactly can we see today it turns out quite a bit and it's really odd for 1:43 · so many reasons So as I'm stood in what I consider to be the middle of the extent of this wall this 1:49 · is Martin Down and I'm just inside Hampshire Now the wall and huge bank on that side and the ditch 1:57 · that I'm stood in this side not a lot on that side at the moment Well that went at least 2 or 3 km in 2:02 · that direction to the north and at least 2 or 3 km in that direction to the south Did it extend 2:07 · further is a bit of a question that we'll come to shortly because that plays an important part 2:12 · Now if I walk to the other side of the wall if I step through the wall to the west well 2:18 · then I'm in Dorset So the modern county border of Hampshire and Dorset actually follows this 2:23 · earthwork in significant part Again this could be useful later Well it's a bit windy up here on the 2:30 · top of the bank so forgive that But we have an amazing view to the east We can see what we're 2:35 · defending against We can see anything incoming towards us Great position Now I want to show you 2:41 · something else really crucial but we're going to get out the wind and head that way south about a 2:46 · kilometers So one or two km south of where I started And this is Blagdon Hill And it's 2:55 · said to be the the greatest extent of this earthwork representing what it used to be 3:00 · and used to look like when it was what it was And up here on that hill you really get a sense of it 3:08 · Let me climb down into the ditch I'll tell you that we have from width to width that way 27 m 3:17 · Now I'm now 5 m from the uh the top of the bank way up there I'm 3 m on this side from the actual 3:26 · sort of ground level And don't forget this would have silted up quite a bit And the view here I can 3:31 · see from miles I feel like I can almost see back to Ssbury This really rivals things like offers 3:37 · dyke and wands dyke But it gets even weirder Now back up to what I referred as the middle 3:42 · part of this the Martin down section Things get really curious because this section here is even 3:48 · wider largely because it's double ditched as we head north So think of your double ditched hill 3:54 · for Okay so there is a lot we can see but what about what we can't see okay so I'm just walking 4:03 · up to the top of the ridge here ahead of me This is Stonehill Gate and I'm around a kilometer or 4:10 · two south of where I was with the earthworks of Buckley Duck I mean the mad earthworks Now 4:16 · according to the old maps well they stop further north of here before we get to this point here 4:22 · But but here is the thing The earthworks do continue just with a notable difference 4:31 · They're much smaller We're talking maybe a meter instead of 5 m Now this sounds more 4:37 · like a boundary ditch like Grim's Ditch and such of the late Bronze Age early Iron Age Okay so take 4:43 · a look at this This is part of that smaller line How well that comes out on camera I don't know 4:50 · But there is the ditch bank I'm on the counter scarp And that line carries on from Boccoli Dyke 4:58 · carries on four or 5 km south keeps on going almost until Verwood direction where it hits 5:03 · a valley bottom in a river Now if it's like this on the southern end well I wonder what 5:08 · it's like on the northern end I wonder how far north it goes that way and what kind of a huge 5:13 · structure we're actually looking at that divided this side on the west that side on the east 5:22 · Okay so here things get a little bit messy but this is good So let's map this as we go Now we 5:29 · can flip this drone shot and stick it on the Bley Dyke that is on the maps And we can also 5:33 · map the current A354 and the Roman road Yep back to that shortly Now do you remember I 5:41 · told you just earlier what we saw back at the junction uh the defensive work split into two 5:48 · as we head further northwest away from that junction So I'm now to the northwest Well 5:53 · they start to split into potentially three different directions Now two start to head 5:58 · almost due west and one importantly continues on the northn northwest alignment The one we see back 6:04 · towards the south This is labeled as great ditch banks However the single most important thing I 6:11 · can see here have a look through this hedge just here Yep there it is as as expected Well we have 6:18 · a significant piece of earthwork We've got a um a wall a defensive structure clearly and we've 6:25 · got a ditch in front of it So we're defending that side We're defending the southwest This 6:30 · side however things change that side of the road As we continue our journey northwest well 6:36 · we don't see these strong earthworks anymore we see more of the linear boundary type earthworks 6:42 · we saw way back to the south on the other end of this bokeley dyke So while we're seeing a pattern 6:48 · here significant earthworks in the main middle section and more like a demarcation on either 6:54 · end either side while this is great we feel like we're getting somewhere and don't forget we've 6:59 · got great ditch banks marked on many a map again to the northwest of here So could this one have 7:06 · carried on that way would it have been another new line over there we've got so many questions 7:10 · Perhaps the biggest one is have we dug here at all can we gain some context from those digs 7:16 · and do we know who exactly was defending that area there from whatever was coming in from the 7:22 · east so Richard Cult came here in the 1700s and he was puzzled and I can completely understand 7:32 · why There is a lot to unpack He identified some of the features here but went with the notion that 7:37 · this was indeed just a Roman settlement This is good He does some really good diagrams and tries 7:43 · to understand the landscape here But there is one person that would enter the scene here and 7:49 · they would change everything we know about this landscape They change our understanding of this 7:54 · wall this east west divide in steps Augustus Pit Rivers I love that name Now Augustus does 8:03 · a lot of work here and firstly he notes what we can see Now Pit Rivers makes some wonderful 8:08 · diagrams of this all along it various shapes and sizes but more importantly than all of that for 8:14 · us now he speculates how far this wall went Now bear in mind I'm four or five miles northwest 8:20 · of Bockley junction back in that direction and even up here one of the routes that he 8:25 · speculated well there's an old map this has great ditch banks and that would have been in the field 8:30 · just beyond this hedro just here through here into that field too there is nothing left now 8:36 · in either side nothing from aerial shots nothing from the liar and even this route 8:41 · way here the track that I'm on shows no signs of it because it's been metal however we know 8:45 · it was there because they marked marked it on those maps late 1800s And also Pit Rivers does 8:51 · speculate that it came out this far and maybe beyond another 5 or 10 miles to the northwest 8:58 · Now a quick side note I want to say how much I love Pit Rivers here His writings really 9:03 · highlight that any prior research here tends to rely on guesswork of towns and battles and 9:08 · campaigns and he wants to stick with hard solid facts and evidence He even quotes Mr 9:13 · green in writing and the making of England History indeed can hardly be attempted with 9:18 · any profit until the scattered records of research among the roads the villas and the tombs etc of 9:24 · this period have been in some way brought together and made accessible I love that So pit rivers we 9:32 · digs The year is 1888 And Augustus Pit Rivers Here's the farmer via a friend that seems to be 9:44 · digging into one of these huge banks here just the other side of the road at Wood Yates Farm 9:49 · He's dressing all of his field in the soil from this bank Augustus Prit Rivers is alarmed by this 9:56 · and learns that the farmer also found five Roman coins within it So it inspires him and 10:01 · he writes to Sir Edward Hulse who owns all the land here and he says "Can I do some digging?" 10:07 · But not just for soil for the land I'd like to do some proper archaeology So those initial coins 10:13 · found by the farmer dated 268 AD to 350 AD Now pit rivers didn't have any context of those and their 10:21 · placement So to ensure they weren't just later coins scattered on top of the soil or silk he dug 10:27 · and he dug deep And in one significant section 30 ft south of the road he found nearly 500 coins The 10:34 · key was of course the latest dated one that turned out to be honorious emperor between 393 AD and 423 10:44 · Side note Augustus Pit Rivers actually agreed with Sir Richard Halt [ __ ] on the town that was here 10:50 · the settlement and he said it was indeed Vindo Cladia which broadly translated in his eyes to 10:56 · um white bank or white ditch Not sure that completely works but we'll run with it 11:02 · So Pit Rivers established that this was very late Roman or very early post Roman Now that 11:08 · sounds like a nice tidy conclusion but that was only the start because as he was excavating a 11:14 · drainage ditch for the settlement here well that went further west and he found another 11:19 · ditch and another wall Now because of the way this interacted with the drainage ditch he knew that 11:25 · this was earlier than the former So importantly for us Augustus Pit Rivers did some excavations 11:32 · on what he referred to as Bocali Junction So it's the bit just ahead of me now where the 11:37 · road crosses through the dikes and of course so does the Roman road So he excavated in detail the 11:43 · Roman road in order to give us the following sequence One the Roman road was constructed 11:51 · no reason to doubt soon after 43 AD Two the rear dyke was constructed sometime after 364 11:58 · AD blocking the Roman road off completely Number three the rear dyke was then filled in Number four 12:05 · the Roman road was then laid back on top of the rear dyke as a repair to the route Number five 12:11 · the fordikeke was then constructed on top of this newly repaired road sometime after 393 AD 12:19 · And never was the Roman road repaired after that time So that was this section kind of complete 12:25 · for Augusta's Pit Rivers We have two different phases of construction seemingly blocking off 12:30 · the main route west from here But what Augustus found next opened up yet more questions Now as I 12:37 · head around half a kilometer or so south to go and show you something quite bizarre Well I'm 12:43 · continually staggered by the sheer size and scale of this earthwork In both phases this must have 12:50 · taken some significant manh hours Hundreds and thousands perhaps of people all working hard here 12:57 · to block off a route They were scared and they feared something coming in from the west This 13:02 · is quite a substantial piece of history here and I'm still confused as to why it's not talked about 13:08 · more So next up is a really curious feature called the epilment or the shoulder And it's 13:17 · not easy to get to but have a look at this The feeling was that perhaps this was the top end 13:24 · of an earlier boundary The shoulder bit sticks out as if it was to protect something Pit rivers 13:31 · opened up trenches to the west and he found nothing So it didn't go any further than this 13:36 · at any point So he opened up a trench on the main part of this shoulder Okay So he found he 13:43 · found nothing that he could reliably use to date that apple He found a few surface bits 13:49 · and pieces of materials but nothing sort of deep enough that he could say yeah well this 13:53 · is definitely the date Now the line of the wall goes there the straight line I say the straight 13:58 · line and of course this eplement goes off almost perpendicular in that direction for about 10 m and 14:04 · then just stops Now since that point others have conducted from his finds that we could be dating 14:10 · this to sometime after 325 AD Well that really just confuses matters even more because that 14:17 · implies we now have potentially three different phases of construction three different times in 14:23 · a 100redyear period that we needed to defend that side the west from whatever was coming in from the 14:29 · east So with that in mind one can possibly back up something that Pit Rivers postulated here So 14:35 · this entire defensive wall could have been built on top of a much earlier British linear earthworks 14:41 · And by that I mean late Bronze Age early Iron Age You remember earlier on in the video we 14:46 · saw to the south side and to the north side of this large wall we saw the more softer linear 14:53 · earthwork Well perhaps come the 4th century we needed to build a much stronger defensive wall 14:59 · and we needed to build it quick So we already have this line which crosses the Roman road 15:04 · Why not build on top of that and use that earlier earthwork as a marker for 15:08 · this okay so we have a huge east west divide here We don't know what it was for at this 15:20 · stage and we don't even know how long it was Some have speculated 10 mi in that direction 15:26 · 10 mi in that direction We just don't know at this stage And of course I've only just heard 15:30 · of this in the last sort of year or so when I was researching the Roman road that sits just 15:35 · behind us So I guess now here I'm on site and I can see it and touch it and I can get an idea 15:40 · of the absolute massive scale behind it Well now I kind of want to try and piece it together and 15:46 · put into context what Augustus Pit Rivers did with what we know about those eras in history 15:54 · So we're clearly defending the west from whatever was to the east Now we have the 15:59 · longestablished settlement of old serum And we have what appears to be a blockage protecting 16:05 · a huge stretch of open downland behind us This could have been seen as a vulnerable gap through 16:11 · which the lifeline of the Roman road traveled So we have a possible initial date of 325 AD 16:18 · down that end Now when I researched that era of Roman history I can't find anything really obvious 16:23 · It stands out of why you'd need this behind me right now to defend Who knows and we also 16:29 · remember that date was a bit sketchy It was based on some of Augustus Pit River's finds he wasn't 16:33 · too sure about But what he was sure about is that coin earliest date 364 AD or soon thereafter And 16:40 · lo and behold a bit of research shows us we have the great conspiracy or the great crisis 16:49 · We have the picss crossing from Hadron's wall from the north And we have the Scotty from what 16:54 · is now Ireland from the west And importantly perhaps for us we have the Saxons arriving from 16:59 · Germania And the southwest it said that the entire north and west was overwhelmed Cities 17:06 · were sacked But the south and the east not quite Perhaps we have news of this 17:10 · spreading fast throughout Britain And perhaps do we have news that Venta Belgaram has been 17:15 · taken And will Serum be next and don't forget if you're building in haste which you probably were 17:20 · for whatever reason well then you may well follow a line that was already here Don't 17:25 · forget we have evidence either side of that huge linear late Bronze Age early Iron Age 17:32 · boundary A year or so on and we have relative peace Theodors had driven 17:43 · barbarians back to their homelands Now this ties in very nicely with 17:47 · Pit Rivers saying that soon after the rear dyke was constructed it was filled 17:51 · back in again We have the repair of the Roman road but that's where my guesswork 17:56 · stops because sometime after 393 we have the wall going up again perhaps towards the end of the 18:09 · Roman rule in Britain And we have the more grander version the Ford dyke and perhaps one that went on 18:15 · even further We have evidence of that potentially in a field to the northwest marked on the maps Now 18:23 · of course when that ford dyke went up this more grander version and it blocked the Roman road in 18:28 · the route west once again well it was never taken down and the Roman road was never repaired So are 18:35 · we seeing areas now once again protecting from the incoming Saxons that date of 393 AD does indeed 18:42 · mark the earliest point at which this could have been built So could we be talking very late Roman 18:48 · era or very early post Roman my feeling is probably an obvious one I guess we have the 18:55 · date 393 or thereafter Well perhaps for 10 AD when we see the removal and withdrawal of 19:01 · troops from Britain of the Romans Onorius even himself said "Well the Britain will have to look 19:08 · after their own." And maybe that's what this is Maybe this wall is again we're just rebuilding 19:14 · the wall that was already here refortifying it because now we have no Roman protection and we 19:19 · don't know what's coming in from the east Or maybe we do know what's coming in from the east 19:23 · But one thing that still staggers me right now even after learning all about this is it 19:28 · it's not that well known This is a huge piece of history right here in our landscape and it could 19:34 · go on for miles in either direction It really did divide East and West Britain on more than 19:40 · one occasion So come and have a look at it Come and see it and maybe ask if we can do 19:44 · some more archaeology on it Either way click on the like button I'll see you this time next week
That just shows to go ya, history is a lot older than we think it is.
(Can’t remember if it was Norm Crosby, Yogi Berra or Paal Gulli who first said that)
From the headline I thought it was about the Norman English (who dominated the west country) and the (displaced) Anglo-Saxon English, who upped stakes and moved to Wales and Cornwall