A Nottinghamshire farmer is building a Romano-British dwelling in his back garden in Calverton. Grahame Watson said he had started the project because he wanted to learn more from experimental archaeology.
The only known Ice Age cave art in Britain is to be revealed to the public for the first time. But the tours, to be held for just two weeks next month, will be the only chance to see the 12,000-year-old carvings at Creswell Crags (Nottinghamshire, England) for some years... continues...
An earthwork enclosure interpreted as possible Late Neolithic/Bronze Age henge or medieval ringwork. A substantial circular enclosure defined by a broad ditch 15 metres wide and 1.5 metres deep, and a possible outer bank 5 metres wide and 0.75 metres high. Approximate diameter (excluding the possible bank) is 85 metres. There is a clearly defined south eastern entrance with very regular, squared ditch terminals. The site is scheduled as a henge, although in the absence of firm evidence, alternative interpretations, such as a medieval ringwork, cannot be ruled out. Scheduled.
In a part of the country which is thin on the ground in anything worth seeing,Oldox camp is a real gem.I went to find it on hearsay, without a map, and after a nice walk through some fields, it just appeared off to the right of the path.Very easy to find.There is an entrance directly facing the tumulus adjacent to the camp with some low but nicely pronounced ditches and earthworks.The walls get higher as you go further round the camp, and as you reach the entrance at the back, they are really impressive and built on quite a steep slope.It's not too overgrown with trees either.There is a small straight ridge running from the camp to the direction of the village of Oxton; it's only a few metres long, but I'd be interested to know if it's part of the camp or some later agricultural addition.The view from the top of the earthwork is something else.I've read that there were other settlements close to Oldox but I don't know where they were, and I don't think they exist anymore.There is a sunken lane running from the village towards the camp.Pretty and fascinating site.
I found a prehistoric guide book written in 1960 which says," This hill-fort is roughly triangular and encloses 1.5 acres. Outside the NW entrance there is a barrow over 90ft across...Roman coins in a pot and a Saxon burial have been found here, but the mound is either a barrow of c. 1,700-1,400 BC or a natural hillock". Nicholas Thomas 'Guide to Prehistoric England' 1976
In addition to a nice photo, Dr Millington's article mentions something that's suggested in the Victoria County History - about various other holed stones being useful to pass your ill children through to perk them up. But maybe he's got a lead - a local lane is called Ricket Lane... so maybe the hole was used to cure rickets? You never know.
At Blidworth in a hollow to the west of the village are some masses of Bunter conglomerate, which stand out above the level of the fields. They remind us of the Hemlock Stone, and like it, are connected by tradition with the pre-Roman past, under the name of Druid Stones. The largest of them rests upon a knob of rock which juts a little above the soil; it has been hollowed from the western side for a distance of about six feet into the interior of the mass. The hollow is pierced through the back in such a way that, it is said, the aperture exactly faces the sun on the morning of Midsummer Day. Thus we are again pointed, as in the Beltane usage on Stapleford Hill*, to rites in which reverence for the sun played a leading part.
*ie the location of the Hemlock Stone.
From 'The Victoria History of the County of Nottingham' v1 (1906), edited by William Page.
The Hemlock Stone features in D H Lawrence's 'Sons and Lovers':
They came to the Hemlock Stone at dinner-time. Its field was crowded with folk from Nottingham and Ilkeston. They had expected a venerable and dignified monument. They found a little, gnarled, twisted stump of rock, something like a decayed mushroom, standing out pathetically on the side of a field. Leonard and Dick immediately proceeded to carve their initials, "L.W." and "R.P.", in the old red sandstone; but Paul desisted, because he had read in the newspaper satirical remarks about initial-carvers, who could find no other road to immortality. Then all the lads climbed to the top of the rock to look around.