VI

MALVERN

A range of granite hills about one to two miles across runs approximately north and south for about nine miles, with West Malvern lying on the west and Great Malvern on the east. From the hilltops you may, on a clear day, see into “twelve fair counties,” and with a good glass you can see Snowdon and the Bristol Channel, the Dursley hills in Gloucestershire, and Bardon Hill in Leicestershire. The range of the Malvern Hills rises abruptly from a great plain whose levels extend eastwards until they are lost in a far-distant horizon. Roughly parallel ranges of low foot-hills show themselves on the west before the surrounding plain is reached.

This island of hills naturally attracted the men of {88} a time when the plains were only accessible by day, and the traces of his manner of life there are most interesting. Unfortunately we are here upon the granite and not the chalk. With no metals at his command, neolithic man could not work in granite with the same freedom as on the chalk downs in the southern counties. Where it has been necessary, as in some of his trenches and paths, he smashed his way through the rock, but generally he worked in the loose material of the surface. Thus, though much remains, much is lost, for the weather and the worms have smoothed out the details of his work. The worms have made the dew-pond impossible, and the routes of his cattle are almost filled up. The granite did not lend itself to the making of wolf-platforms; and naturally, we find no flint quarries.

But what remains gives us an unusually vivid insight into his life. Without the wolf-platforms his herds were insufficiently protected against the wolf. Without flints, or having only those which had been imported, he was inefficiently armed, and without the dew-pond at hand his camp could not stand a long siege.

In what we actually find, we can trace the fact that fear was his constant companion on the Malvern Hills.

His chief settlement was a great camp on the Herefordshire Beacon, one of the most southerly hills of the ridge. The whole surface of the hill has been {89} taken in hand, and rough-hewn to serve his needs. The trench and embankment work has not the linear continuity of that in the chalk: it has been necessary to circumvent the outcrops of granite, but it rises tier above tier until a most formidable stronghold has been constructed. The most interesting point is the minuteness of the area contained in the citadel at the top. Unlike the spacious citadels upon the chalk, it is too small for defence for more than a few hours. There are two large cattle-camps, extending like wings, one to WSW. of the central stronghold, and the other to ENE., each enclosed by a double ring of great trench and embankment work.

Looking at this camp from a point some miles to the north of it, one is impressed by the dark and forbidding aspect of the place. The upper part of the hill appears to have been hewn into three great steps, the outline of which shows itself boldly against the sky, and the highest step is crowned by the upstanding citadel. These northern slopes are in shadow; the edges of the embankment just catch the rays of the sun, and stand out as horizontal lines of light against the shaded background.

Approaching it, one sees that a deep modern cutting has been made which divides the Herefordshire Beacon (which is occupied by the camp) from the hills immediately to the north of it. This cutting was made in the middle of the last century, and a road passes through it, running east and west. On the northern {90} side of this cutting may be seen the neolithic road which runs along the crest of the hills, and above the cutting on the southern side its continuation may be seen running up to the camp. We walked round and joined this path. Above this cutting, although the path must have been practically untraversed for half a century, it is as clearly marked as possible by the close fine turf which always characterises the ancient ways. It passes through an entrance in the embankment at the extreme north of the northern cattle compound; but the path is not indented into the ground, the entrance is steep—circumstances which undoubtedly indicate that it was not used by cattle. This led us to seek for the constructed cattle entrance, and we determined to follow the western external embankment until we came to it. At first we found none, but we observed that near the base of the citadel a way with a gentle slope had been made from the outer trench leading up to the contained cattle enclosure. We now sought a cattle entrance to this trench after it winds round to the west of the citadel, and duly found it in such a position that the cattle could either be driven directly into the southern cattle enclosure, or turned into the trench, and so driven round the base of the citadel and up the slope to the northern enclosure. These cattle enclosures afford an evidence of the immensity of the labour expended in building the camp. In each case the contained area is fairly smooth—as though the outcrops of granite and even {91} the ridge of the hill itself had been artificially removed or levelled up by the earth excavated from the trenches. This is the only hill in the neighbourhood which is possessed of any level ground, and it is difficult to believe that it has not been deliberately made. Together these two cattle enclosures cover a large area. The circumference must be quite a mile in length.

The citadel stands between the cattle compounds, and dominates them both. It is at a considerable elevation above them, and surrounded by rings of trench and embankment. On the south-east aspect some six or seven tiers may be counted, and the area contained becomes smaller and smaller until it is reduced to a rough parallelogram about thirty yards by fifty yards.

The problem of a water-supply was very simply solved in this camp. On the slopes between the camp and the hill on the east of it, springs of water were to be found, which even now help to fill the reservoir which lies at the foot. On the eastern side of the camp there is a way through the lowest embankment from which an ancient path leads in the direction of the springs.

The hostile aspect which the camp presents when viewed from a distance is not dissipated by a nearer knowledge of it. It speaks of gloom in every recess, and we turned back, oppressed by the sullen genius of the place.

The neolithic work which is most distinctive of this neighbourhood is to be found in the system of {92} roadways. Two parallel tracks within a few feet of one another run from end to end of the ridge, and crossing the ridge are many smaller roads running at right angles to the high tracks.

This high-road is most interesting. Its traces are first seen near the northern end of the range in the valley to the north of the Worcestershire Beacon at a point from which the plain can be reached easily either on the east or the west. Thence it runs nearly on the crest to the extreme south of the range, formerly entering and still leaving the camp on the Herefordshire Beacon on its way.

Although it adheres closely to this general line, the particular route chosen was dictated by fear. This fear was the fear of being discovered by exposure on the skyline.

Tracing it for mile after mile, one sees how easily it might have been carried along the very top of the ridge, and yet one finds that it has been made laboriously a few feet below, and to the eastern side of the crest. The open plain on the east does not seem to have been dreaded by prehistoric man, for that could be watched, but he feared the folds of the hills on the west, and from that direction he was hidden while passing along his high-road.

The idea that this labour was incurred only to secure the power of secret concentration for the purpose of attack or defence, does not entirely commend itself to us. {93}

Nor is the suggestion that the object was to secure shelter from wind in this elevated position entirely satisfactory. For in that case, and granting that two roads had to be made, why was not one constructed on each slope of the ridge so that one should always be on the lee side?

It seems much more probable that here, at all events, it was never really safe for neolithic man to expose himself on the skyline, that he had to be always on the alert against his neighbours, and that he spent a furtive existence when once outside his great entrenchments.

However, the strangest point about this route is its doubleness. As we have said, there are really two high-roads, parallel, and within a few feet of one another. This double condition exists over most of the distance, about four miles, from the northern termination to the great camp on the Herefordshire Beacon. It is not, however, double over the whole of the way. There is one section, perhaps half a mile in length, where the two roads have coalesced into one, and after leaving the camp it is continued in a southerly direction to the end of the range, as a single road.

Why make two roads ? Their appearance suggests that they were intended for pedestrians, and not for cattle; the section of the road which is single negatives the idea that, as in the case of the ascending and descending cattle-ways in connection with the camps, it was necessary to prevent herds from intermingling. {94} The problem appears insoluble to us, and is an example of the many unanswerable questions which meet us in exploring the works of neolithic man. Frequently it is impossible for us to divine his purposes or to follow his thoughts.

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