Fort of the Britons! The place of the old hunters.

Down at the mesolithic springs near Stonehenge today. Glorious start to the day, if a little cold!

This site is subject to ongoing media interest since details of the amazing archaeological finds became public. This area and its finding inspired my series of Stonehenge novels.
Weaving together strands of folklore with real archaeology, plus  what we already have learned in a few hundred years of archaeology in the Stonehenge landscape, has allowed me to create a believable, and hopefully "real" feeling prehistoric landscape filled with interesting individuals who are just as human are we are today.

It was on site today that I learned that Vespasians Camp (named erroneously by William Camden, a 15th century topographer) was called something else in the Middle Ages.

"Walls."

This may sound unassuming and of no discernible interest, but it's not until you see that directly across from the site (within 1 mile) is the neolithic henge of Durrington Walls - itself an integral part of the Stonehenge ritual complex, where the river was the focus, not Stonehenge.
Avebury, another important prehistoric site in SW England, famed for its standing stones, was called "Wallsdyke" in the Middle Ages.
This is actually something that I came to realize and placed in my novels. A glossary of all the linguistics I've used is in the back of the second book. I did not have time to place it in the first volume.

"Walls" is saxon for "Britons." i.e. Dyke of the Britons. Durrington (Farm of Doer's People) of the Britons.

So we have the oldest known surviving name for the site just simply named perhaps simple after the ancient inhabitants that had their camp there after the ice sheets retreated over 10,000years ago - again, the second oldest, continually inhabited place in NW Europe, second to Thatcham.

 The recent rainfall of March 2014 has left the water meadow below almost cut off on one side. Originally, the whole fort would have been a mini island, surrounded by water.

The swan, an ancient and revered animal in the neolithic and bronze age. In one of the barrows at Stonehenge a flute made from the leg bone of a swan was found, A Royal animal, it's also interesting to note that Amesbury has Royal connections going back to the ancient Saxon Kings of Wessex, and to Queen Eleanor, wife of King Henry II.

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