BRITAIN'S OLDEST TOWN.

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Volume 81, Issue 34, 3 November 1937, Page 4

BRITAIN'S OLDEST TOWN.

Tlie secrets of what is probqbly the oldest ocoupied site 111 Britain for which a. continuous record can be traced are now being revealed. This is the result of excavations at Maiden Castle, Porset, the greatest of English earthworks. Old it was known to be, built by some race of Britons back in prehistorio times. What was not known, and is now revealed, is that the height upon which it stinds held a hill town,' or village, in the Stone Age, 15 centuries or more before the gigantic earth jfortrCss came into existence about 2000 years ago. The Society of Antiquaries for t^o years past hks been elpl6ring the earthwork. Dr. Jt. E. Mortimer Wheeler, under whose skilled direction the work has be£n done, said: The Stone Age folk had surrounded their village with intermittent ditches characteristic of the early Downland settlements. Large nnmbers of flint axes and other implements, primitive pottery, and weaving combs made of deerhorn, indicated their stage of life. They engaged in agriculture aUd stodk raising. Their oxen were of a large breed long since extinct. After this occupation the hill-top was left derelict for several centuries. In about the fourth ceiitury B.C. Maiden Castle, repeopled, apappears in its flrst foim, a small enclosure of some 15 acres with a single rampart and ditch. The one entrance, east, was flanked by stout timber pallisades; their sockets were discovered last suniiher. Later the area of the hill town was trebled. Invaders coining from the west about 100 B.C., interrupted a. period of relatiyely peaceful agricultural dqvelopment. It was these newcomers who redesigned and built the defences of Maiden Castle on their preBent huge soale, adding the carefully-guarded entrances. They brought with them a new culture and a new method of construction. Despite its military aspect and use as a plaCe of refuge, the hill city seemed on the whole to have had a placid existence. Its populaUe, mainly engaged in farming pursuits, is estimated to have reached 5000. Shortly after the Roman conquest of Britain in the flrst century A.D., Maiden Castle was afiandoned. Its people doubtless were removed to the new Roman town raised on tfie site of modern Dorchester.