Brent Knoll Camp
| Brent Knoll Camp | |
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| Location | Brent Knoll, Somerset, England |
| Coordinates | 51°15′15″N 2°56′44″W / 51.25417°N 2.94556°WCoordinates: 51°15′15″N 2°56′44″W / 51.25417°N 2.94556°W |
| Area | 1.6 hectares (16,000 m2) |
| Built | Iron Age |
| Official name: Brent Knoll hill fort | |
| Designated | 3 June 1994 |
| Reference no. | 24001 |
 Location of Brent Knoll Camp in Somerset
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Brent Knoll Camp is an Iron Age Hill fort at Brent Knoll, 3 kilometres (1.9 mi) from Burnham-on-Sea, Somerset, England. It has been designated as a Scheduled Ancient Monument (No: 24001), and is now in the care of the National Trust.
The hill is 137 metres (449 ft) high dominates the low surrounding landscape of the Somerset Levels and is visible from the M5 motorway.
The word 'knoll' usually means a small hill or hill-top. The origin of the name Brent is unclear, but one possibility is from a word meaning burnt in Old English, suggesting that the settlement was at some time burnt by the Danes. Another proposal is that the name comes from a Celtic term meaning "high place", or even from another Celtic word, briant, meaning law, as the law was anciently promulgated from high places. Another possibility is that the name of Brent simply derives from the local river, the Brent, which gives its name to a Somerset hundred.
The hill consists of clays and limestone from the Jurassic era and geologically forms an outcrop of the nearby Mendip Hills.
Before the Somerset Levels were drained, Brent Knoll was an island, known as the Isle (or Mount) of Frogs, that provided a safe haven from the water and marshes. It temporarily became an island again during the Bristol Channel floods of 1607.
There is a small reservoir on the south east flank of the knoll.
Hill forts developed in the Late Bronze and Early Iron Age, roughly the start of the first millennium BC. The reason for their emergence in Britain, and their purpose, has been a subject of debate. It has been argued that they could have been military sites constructed in response to invasion from continental Europe, sites built by invaders, or a military reaction to social tensions caused by an increasing population and consequent pressure on agriculture. The dominant view since the 1960s has been that the increasing use of iron led to social changes in Britain. Deposits of iron ore were located in different places to the tin and copper ore necessary to make bronze, and as a result trading patterns shifted and the old elites lost their economic and social status. Power passed into the hands of a new group of people. Archaeologist Barry Cunliffe believes that population increase still played a role and has stated "[the forts] provided defensive possibilities for the community at those times when the stress [of an increasing population] burst out into open warfare. But I wouldn't see them as having been built because there was a state of war. They would be functional as defensive strongholds when there were tensions and undoubtedly some of them were attacked and destroyed, but this was not the only, or even the most significant, factor in their construction".
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