In pictures: Inside Silbury Hill

BBC News have a mini-feature regarding the ongoing work inside Silbury Hill, as efforts continue to stabilise the prehistoric structure. There are half a dozen pictures, and as the accompanying descriptions contain some interesting comments, I've included them here...

Building work has been going on to stabilise the ancient monument of Silbury Hill in Wiltshire for six months but before sealing up the tunnel, media were allowed inside it.

Parts of the 4,400-year-old Neolithic site were thought to be collapsing because of the tunnels dug by archaeologists over many centuries - the last of which was created in 1968.

As engineers worked to stabilise the monument, archaeologists have tried to unlock the site's ancient secrets and find out how, why and when it was built.

Discoveries include medieval postholes on top of the hill and iron arrowheads, indicating there may have been a huge military building there during the Saxon or Norman periods.

One theory is that the top of the hill was lopped off around the time of the Battle of Hastings or even earlier.

From next week, the tunnel will be repacked with chalk to stabilise the hill for future generations to appreciate.

Why anyone would wish to have sliced off the top of what would presumably have been a more conical monument, back in the days of the Norman Conquest, is something of a mystery, unless they decided to exploit Silbury Hill's height as a natural spot from which to overlook the surrounding countryside, lest any of the defeated but rebellious Anglo-Saxon population decided to make their feelings clearly known in the guise of armed insurrection.

From the top of Silbury Hill it is possible to survey the land for many miles in every direction, and it's easy to imagine windswept Norman sentries casting their eyes out over this newly conquered land, watching for the slightest indication of trouble from afar - however, it may have been the Anglo-Saxon population itself that carried out this act of uncivil engineering, and maybe they in turn were, rightly, worried about incursions from overseas into southern England.

Many will be hoping that these current efforts will indeed be enough to shore up this ancient monument, as it there has been an alarming series of reports over the past few years, which have indicated that the structural integrity of the site was under considerable duress.

image from here