Story of the danger at Danebury Hill Fort

History

Danger at Danebury Hill Fort is one of Hampshire County Council's Story Trails, walks of around a mile with a story to share with children along the way; it was on the council's list by October 2013. The walk climbs from the car park to the fort, goes through its earthwork defences to a wild pear tree and returns to the main gate, and its story imagines the people of Danebury defending their harvest against a raiding party from the hill fort at Balksbury. The council says Danebury began as a Late Bronze Age stock enclosure about 3,000 years ago, that the main defences that can be seen now were built around 2,500 years ago, and that the fort stayed in use until about 100 BC, some 140 years before the Roman invasion of AD 43. Excavations led by Professor Barry Cunliffe of Southampton University between 1969 and 1988 found 73 roundhouses, 500 rectangular buildings and thousands of deep storage pits. The council bought the fort in 1958, and its Countryside Service manages it as a scheduled monument and local nature reserve.