Burnley and Pendle ARCHAEOLOGY

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     New Bronze-Iron Age Hillfort Discovered

Taking advantage of the unseasonably warm April weather (2015) a small group of the PDCAS ventured onto Extwistle Moor (on the outskirts of Burnley) in order to follow-up promising features evident on LiDAR imaging.

We were rewarded with the discovery of a previously unknown Hillfort site set on a promontory of land formed by one of the many moorland streams within this area. The site is typical of minor hillforts within our district in that it has a central enclosure crossed by a trans-ridge dyke and (possibly) a bivallate defence system. The site incorporates a number of circular and rectilinear enclosures within an extended outer enclosure. The details of the site have not yet been surveyed owing to a request from the head land ranger to allow the bird nesting  period to finish.

This defended site is suggested to have been occupied during the Bronze Age to Early Iron Age and would have been related to the control of movement of traded raw materials and finished goods through the Widdop pass and the Boulsworth area (between the east and west coasts) and the north-south Pennine route.  

Brief outline of the Hillfort from rapid hand-held GPS survey

John Clayton  April 2015