Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

--> 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

1 posted on 04/29/2025 10:01:50 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies ]


To: SunkenCiv

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


7 posted on 04/29/2025 4:17:24 PM PDT by Paal Gulli
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson