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In the Iron Age the building of embanked enclosures with often impressive ramparts became common; some may have late Bronze Age origins. While these are often known as hillforts because they are often on hilltops, defence may well not have been their main purpose.
Such structures are common in some parts of Britain and in some areas they were occupied for between five hundred and a thousand years. In other places, the fashion for erecting or maintaining hillforts was relatively short-lived, while in some areas they were never built. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - So what were hillforts for?When excavated they display wide variations in the types of structures they contain, indicating different roles at different dates.
In some cases, sites cover large areas but have only slight earthworks containing very little. These were possibly stock enclosures. Others are dominated by structures perhaps best interpreted as granaries for storage and redistribution of grain. Other sites may have been used by specific sections of society such as young adult males. Often hillforts were restructured through their life but many had been abandoned centuries before the coming of the Romans. Although the building of hillforts is thought to indicate a concern by people in the Iron Age with a show of strength, it may well be that many hillforts were built as impressive displays of prestige and community identity rather than places that were frequently used in anger. Often, at larger sites, the ramparts are much greater than would be required for any likely types of raiding or warfare practised at this time. Hillforts can also be seen as large-scale communal gathering places, although whether they were controlled by local elites is a matter for debate. Large sites like Mam Tor may have been occupied only temporarily by people who shifted their settlements between nucleated occupation of the hill and dispersed settlement in the surrounding landscape. Social bonds may have been reaffirmed while people lived together on Mam Tor. In the Peak District, the larger hillforts are placed at the boundaries between areas with different topographies and resources. Today, most hillforts, by definition, comprise surviving circuits of earthworks, with banks and outer ditches. Often there are counterscarp banks beyond, created by periodic clearing of silts from the ditch. When built, the inner bank or banks were often surmounted by, or faced with, timber ramparts. The ditches were significantly deeper before silting took place. Surface evidence for gatehouses and timber structures in the interior is rarely visible. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Examples of Peak District hillfortsIn the Peak District, hillforts are not common. Classic examples of some size exist, with the best-known and most-frequently visited at Mam Tor at the west end of the Hope Valley.
Mam Tor is unusual in that many shallow platforms are visible on the slopes in the interior, which indicate the sites of buildings. Another fine example is on private land at Fin Cop above Ashford.
Other sites are significantly smaller such as Castle Ring at Harthill and Ball Cross above Bakewell, both without public access.
This particularly bleak and out of the way site, with its ramparts facing onto high moorland that would not have been settled during the Iron Age. Its location raises questions about how the hillfort functioned and who was meant to see the ramparts; perhaps only the people who built it! The enclosure at Gardom's Edge, once interpreted as a hillfort, is now thought to be much older and is interpreted differently.
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