Читать книгу Walks in the South Downs National Park онлайн

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There is no wild nature on the South Downs. This is a man-made landscape, and history has left its mark on almost every mile, beginning with primitive Stone Age settlers who grazed sheep, cattle and pigs here before the last Ice Age. A few of their long barrows (communal tombs) remain, and at Cissbury the ground is rucked with the pits and spoil heaps of a Neolithic flint mine; some crude flint implements were also discovered at Slindon.

Many hundreds of tumuli (round barrows) in which Bronze Age people buried their dead line the ridgeway, and at the head of several dry valleys are cross-dykes, reminders of the same period. These may have been part of a defence system to protect routes across open land, or were used perhaps as the boundaries of agricultural estates.

Hillforts, such as those on Mount Caburn, Devil’s Dyke and Old Winchester Hill, proclaim the one-time presence of Iron Age man, but none is more impressive than Cissbury Ring, a massive earthwork covering 65 acres. Although the site had been mined for flint in the New Stone Age, Iron Age settlers built their fortification here some time between 300BC and 59BC, with two clearly defined ramparts and a protective ditch from which around 60,000 tons of chalk had to be dug.