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Image of Galley Hill (Sandy) (Hillfort) by juamei

Open Source Environment agency LIDAR

Image credit: © Environment Agency copyright and/or database right 2015.

juamei Jan 24, 2016

Articles

Galley Hill (Sandy)

Tour of Newly Excavated Bedfordshire Hillfort

Rhiannon Jun 2, 2006

It seems you can go on a tour of the fort on the 29th June:
rspb.org.uk/england/central/events/index.asp?id=tcm:5-99339

also, from Biggleswade Today
biggleswadetoday.co.uk/ViewArticle2.aspx?SectionID=182&ArticleID=1529221

Excavations to try and unearth buried secrets of an Iron Age fort began at a Sandy nature reserve this week.

Archaeologists are carrying out a one-week dig on Sandy Warren’s Galley Hill Fort in a joint project between English Heritage and the RSPB.

It is hoped the £12,000 project will shed light on who lived there and what the area, believed to date back to 250BC, was used for.

Peter Bradley, RSPB site manager, said: “The reason for the work is, as far as we know, it has never been dug in the past and we would like to know more about it, particularly for when it is opened up to the public in a couple of years’ time.

“The idea is it would be seen from a very long way away by other tribes. It could have been defensive or a market place, or where people lived. We don’t know yet what use this fort had.”

A JCB digger is being used to excavate the banks and bore holes will be dug to uncover any remains.

[Lots of the land at the RSPB site here is being cleared of trees to return it to heathland – so it should be easier to see how it fits into the local landscape?]

Galley Hill (Sandy)

Hillfort

Rhiannon Apr 24, 2009

This page on the Tha Engliscan Gesithas site is an interesting argument for the hills here being the ‘Woden’s Hlaew’ mentioned in Anglo Saxon documents – and thus once sacred to Woden.

Maybe it could be that people were aware of the earthworks up here and just put them down to Woden (in a kind of ‘Grim’s Ditch’ sort of way).

That’s if there’s truly any link at all of course...

Galley Hill (Sandy)

Hillfort

Rhiannon Jun 2, 2006

There’s the common vague feeling that this is a ‘Roman’ fort (it is true that a Roman site is nearby). Maybe the excavations will highlight that the occasional thing did happen before the Romans turned up in this country.

Galley Hill (Sandy)

Hillfort

Rhiannon Apr 24, 2009

Albion Archaeology

A couple of years back a cursus was discovered and partially excavated very close by. You’d have been able to see it from up here on the hill. This webpage seems a bit confused and calls it an oval shape, but I’m sure that can’t be right? Apparently it runs for at least 750m (east from the sewage works!) pretty impressive.

It does make you wonder whether the cursus was positioned in relation to the Ivel river, and also this hill (this part of Bedfordshire otherwise being quite flat).

I wonder if all traces of it would have gone by the time the forts were built?