Fortifications, military constructions designed for defensive warfare, have been used for many thousands of years in a variety of designs which have become incresingly complex. The practice of improving an area's defense is also known as "fortification".
|
Many military installations, particularly in the USA are known as "forts", although they are not always fortified.
|
Until the arrival of Palaeolithic (New Stone Age) people in the British Isles, the Mesolithic people of the Middle Stone Age and their predecessors of the Palaeolithic or Old Stone Age were hunter-gatherers who led a nomadic existence following the migration patterns of the species which they preyed upon. To protect themselves from wild animals during the night, they may have surrounded their temporary encampments with rudimentary barriers of bushes such as the "shambos made of thorn bushes by African herders to protect their cattle at night from marauding carnivores. There is no evidence of this taking place and none is likely to be found.
The Neoliths were farmers who relied on their cereal crops and domesticated livestock. They lived in permanent communities tied to their arable fields and are best known for their lake dwellings built on platfroms raised on stilts driven into the lake bed with the surrounding water providing a considerable obstacle to would-be attackers. It is possible that the influx of the Bronze Age Gaels or Giodels with their superior weapons drove the people of the New Stone Age to settle on high ground and to fortify their settlements as at Carn Brea overlooking Redruth in Cornwall.
Just as the Bronze-wielding Gaels or Giodels had forced their Neolithic predecessors into Wales and the Higlands of Scotland, so in about 600 BC they started to be ousted from the land by the iron-bearing Celts, the "Cymri" or "Brythons" who are remembered in the modern names for Wales ("Cymru"), Britain and the British Isles.
It was these Iron Age "Britons" who peppered the hilltops of the West Country with their fortified settlements known as "hill forts", the largest and best known of which is Maiden Castle near Dorchester in Dorset.
The hill forts were protected by vast ditches and banks which encircled them, frequently a concentric series of such ditches and banks, the innermost bank surmounted by a wooden pallisade. The fortifications were pierced by entranceways, frequently each hill fort possessing two or more, and these weak spots were protected by raised gatehouses.
At Hengistbury Head, near Bournemouth and Christchurch on the Dorset coast, the peninsula was protected on two sides by the English Channel and on the third by Christchurch Harbour. During the Iron Age, the settlement here was protected by double dykes thrown across the neck of the peninsula.
The hill forts may have proved ample protection for those who dwelt within them or resorted to them in times of trouble from the surrounding countryside when attacked by neighbouring tribes. They proved no match, however, for the seasoned and highly discplined legions of the Roman army which practised their warfare throughout Europe, Asia Minor and North Africa when they invaded the British Isles in AD43.
Some claim that the perimeters of the Iron Age hill forts were too long to defend properly. The Romans appear to have agreed as at Habledon Hill overlooking the river Stour between Child Okeford and Iwerne Courtney in Dorset where they chose not to use the Iron Age hill fort and fortified the smaller Hod Hill a little distance to the south-east.
When the Roman legions were not soldiering, they were kept busy building anything from roads and forts to temples. The typical Roman fortification consisted of a ditch with a bank thrown up behind. At the top of the bank would b a pallisade, usually of wood (although, ever pragmatic, the Romans used stone if it was available locally) and watch towers spaced at regular intervals and gatehouses at the entrances. Behind the pallisade was a road or path allowing the soldiers to move along it quickly to where they were required most.
Throughout the Roman occupation, the south-east of the British Isles was regularly attacked by the Saxons from what is now the region of Germany and beyond the Roman empire. The Romans even had a military commander, the "Count of the Saxon Shore", charged with countering the threat. The chief towns and ports of the south-eastern coasts were defended by stout masonry walls as at "Anderida" (modern Pevensey in Sussex) and Porchester near Portsmouth in Hampshire. With Rome itself under threat from the barbarians, the Roman legions were withdrawn from the British province at the very edge of the empire in 410AD leaving open to Saxon attack and settlement.
By the 8th century, the Saxons had pushed the Romano-Britons as far west as Cornwall beyond the river Tamar. Shunning the Roman forts, villae and towns (considering the masonry buildings built by the Romans to have been erected by "the giants), the Saxons preferred to live on their farms or in their hamlets or villages. Raids by the Danes, however, whether sporadic or (increasingly) sustained campaigns, forced them to band together for protection into compact villages and towns and organise the shires which are essentially our modern counties. By the time Alfred the Great came to rule Wessex, towns became fortified against the Danes by strong walls to become known as "burghs". With no standing armies and the levies raised when required, the Saxons had no military forts in the Roman fashion.
The Norman conquest of 1066 brought a new problem to bear on fortifications. A small minority, the Norman conquerors were the lords of a Saxon kingdom which was hostile to their presence. Their answer was to shelter behind the walls of the castle and the Conqueror even had pre-fabricated wooden castles prepared in Normandy for use in newly-conquered England.
|
| | | Links to Other Pages on This Site
|
| |
| | |
|
| | | Links to Other Sites
|
| |
| | |
Hits on this page since December 6th| Jan | | | | | Feb | | | | | Mar | | | | | Apr | | | | | May | | | | | Jun | | | | | Jul | | | | | Aug | | | | | Sep | | |  | | Oct | | | | | Nov | | | | | Dec | | |  |
| current year: | | previous year: |
No messages posted on this page Only Members of the Site can post messages in this section. Signing in is easy from our Home Page. DISCLAIMER: Whilst we endeavour to ensure the content of this site is correct, we cannot undertake that information you find here, is, or will remain accurate and complete. We do not warrant that any information contained on this site is fit for any purpose. If you wish to place reliance on any such information you must check its accuracy by some other means before doing so. MEMBERS get aditional features on our pages and will soon be able to interact with the site and add their views and informastion. Sign up, from the Home-Page, is simple and involves typing in your email address and a password of your choice. If you are in any way connected with any location or interested in the subject mentioned on this page and have an hour or two a month to spare, we would welcome you as a local moderator - please email the webmaster by CLICKING HERE. Privacy Policy
|
| 
