Hillforts of Britain
The story of Captain Ban and the Hollow Hill led me to explore the fascinating historical hillforts of Britain. These tiered earthen Bronze and Iron Age fortresses seemed reminiscent of the ceremonial mounds the Native American Eastern Woodland tribes constructed in their towns.
Interesting. Another cultural parallel. The concept behind Rootstock was taking shape.
Maiden Castle in Dorset, England is the largest of remaining hillforts. This 1935 aerial photo shows its concentric rings. Standing atop its expansive 47 acres, one can imagine the sense of dominion those who lived there might have felt for the lands stretching out beneath them.
An artist’s reconstruction of what the hillfort might have looked like during its habitation inspired Twelvestones, the fortress of the Firstborn in the Rootstock saga. Crown the hillfort with a towering white castle and you have one impressive stronghold.
Dara went back to walking the ramparts with Ruin, passing expert archers and hastily trained gunners. He sought no one’s eye but met any that caught his. Soon, they would make their stand here together.
Here on the hollow hill. Never breached, not once in a thousand years.
For a thousand years, the hillfort stood firm, ringed by concentric earthen walls built by his distant ancestors. Stone walls had been added atop the original clay ramparts by the early Tyne kings. Between the three rings, ditches bristled with iron spikes and coils of barbed wire, tastefully camouflaged as saplings and briar bushes, of course.
At the base of the hillfort, a blackwater moat circled deep and wide. An occasional trail of ripples broke its obsidian surface, a reminder of the unsavory creatures that swam its dark waters.
Taking Twelvestones meant braving the moat and breaching its walls not once, but thrice.
Shaped more like an egg than a circle, the outermost perimeter had only one gate. A few narrow, inconspicuous passages tunneled under the moat for the convenience of the Firstborn, but for an army with wagons and cannons, Twelvestones presented only one way in or out.
Never breached. Not even once in a thousand years.
Twelvestones is portrayed in Rootstock as both hillfort and hollow hill, and the secrets hidden within its depths have the power to either save or destroy them all.
This snowy image of Chateau de Pierrefonds is in my mind’s eye whenever I write about Castle Twelvestones. Pierrefonds is a stunning example of the sort of grandeur and elegance the Firstborn would have built atop their mysterious hillfort.
A few other links about these evocative places you might like as much as I did:
Why prehistoric Welsh people built so many forts on hills.
East Lomond hill fort illustrated reconstruction.
The history of Britain’s secret hillforts and best places to see