Читать книгу The Cotswold Way. NATIONAL TRAIL Two-way trail guide - Chipping Campden to Bath онлайн

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The first ‘Cotsallers’ were nomads, hunter-gatherers who drifted through what was then a heavily wooded region, but made little visual impact upon it. It was Neolithic man, around 3000BC, who first began to clear patches in the woodland cover and to till the soil, and in so doing started a primitive form of landscape management. These groups of New Stone Age agriculturalists left behind some 85 burial tombs scattered throughout the region, among the finest being Hetty Pegler’s Tump and Belas Knap, both on or very close to the Cotswold Way. These ancient relics are typical of what has become known as the Severn-Cotswold Group: large cairns of stone with a covering of soil, and internal passageways lined with drystone walling which open into burial chambers. It has been estimated that some of these tombs must have involved about 15,000 man-hours to build, which indicates a surprising level of social involvement and organisation.

As well as Hetty Pegler’s Tump and Belas Knap, there is another similar burial mound of the same period on Frocester Hill, while at Crickley Hill near Birdlip recent excavations reveal evidence of a 3 acre (1¼ hectares) Neolithic causewayed camp. This contained a village protected by earthwork defences of a double ditch and dry walling topped by a palisade. The discovery of flint arrowheads and items of charred fencing suggest that life in the New Stone Age was not entirely peaceful.