Worlebury Camp
| Worlebury Camp | |
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A picture of the present-day site
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| Location | North Somerset, Somerset, England |
| Coordinates | 51°21′26.73″N 2°59′6.55″W / 51.3574250°N 2.9851528°WCoordinates: 51°21′26.73″N 2°59′6.55″W / 51.3574250°N 2.9851528°W |
| Built | During the Iron Age |
| Architectural style(s) | British pre-Roman Architecture |
| Official name: Worlebury Camp | |
| Reference no. | 22841 |
 Worlebury Camp shown within Somerset
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Worlebury Camp is the name of the place where an Iron Age hill fort once stood atop Worlebury Hill, which is north of the town of Weston-super-Mare in Somerset, England. This fort was designed for defence, as is evidenced the number of walls and ditches around the site. Archaeologists have found several large triangular platforms around the sides of the fort, lower down on the hillside. They have found nearly one hundred storage pits of various sizes cut into the bedrock, and many of these had human remains, coins, and other artefacts in them. However, in more recent times, the fort has suffered damage and been threatened with complete destruction on multiple occasions. This location has been designated an Scheduled Ancient Monument, and it falls within the Weston Woods Local Nature Reserve which was declared to Natural England by North Somerset Council in 2005.
In The Ancient Entrenchments and Camps of Gloucestershire, Edward J. Burrow mentions that probably either the Goidel or Brython people initially built Worlebury Camp. The Belgae people subsequently overthrew the initial inhabitants and occupied the camp for a time, but they were finally destroyed at the hands of the Romans.
Worlebury Camp has been explored at various times over a period of 150 years. From 1851 to 1852, Charles Dymond, Edwin Martin Atkins, and Francis Warre excavated and surveyed Worlebury Camp. Dymond returned in 1880 to continue the excavation, which lasted until 1881. Another century passed before the Woodspring Museum from Weston-super-Mare excavated more of Worlebury camp in 1987 to 1988. Finally, in 1998, the Avon Extensive Urban Study team performed the latest (as of 2008) assessment of the site.
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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