Hambledon Hill from Shillingstone Churchyard
December 2002
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POPULATION
1921
1931
1951
1961
1971
1981
1991
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651
605
637
667
830
930
980
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Hambledon Hill overlooking the centre of the village dominates the prehistory of the area. Seventy-four
hectares of the 192 metre high hill has been established as a National Nature Reserve while the
archeological remains are a Scheduled National monument.
During the Neolithic (New Stone Age) period, about 8,000 BC, the inhabitants of the area would have been
hunter-gatherers who made clearings amongst the climax forest which covered the British Isles.
The hill seems to have been and important ceremonial site from about 4,000 BC with the construction
of long barrows, two of which can be seen quite distinctly on top of Hambledon Hill. The Iron Age
'hill fort' here was a 'causewayed enclosure' - a circular area enclosed by banks
and ditches with causeways through them. The area was excavated in the 1980's and it seems that
the dead were left in the central area, exposed to the elements and for the bones to be picked
clean by animals before burial in the long barrows.
THE BRONZE AGE
The Royal Commission Survey found at least five Bronze Age barrows on the site but these are almost
invisible. It is during the Bronze Age that the slopes of Hambledon Hill began to be cultivated and the
field boundaries can still be discerned in the low light of summer evenings.
THE IRON AGE
Iron objects have been recovered from the site dating to between 700 and 500 BC. Early Iron Age pottery
fragments were first discovered in 1925.
The simple hill fort was replaced in the mid-Iron Age, between the 8th and 6th centuries BC, with the
double banks and ditches - the white banks on the 192-metre hill must have made the site visible for
many miles around - to make the site probably the finest examples of its sort in England. There were
impressive entrances in the south-west and north-east corners.
The site was probably used during the mid-Iron Age as, by the late Iron Age, its importance waned in favour
of nearby Hod Hill.
