Home News Project info The River Wye Links prehistory: the iron age     The ploughed-out Gaer Cop Iron Age hill-fort in Hentland parish. The ditch is visible as a darker green against the lighter green of the rest of the crop in the two fields in the foreground. A lighter mark beyond indicates the position of the internal bank. The bank has dictated the course of the old lane running into the distance. The larger road road is a turnpike newly built in the 1820s which cut through the then standing ramparts of the hillfort. Photograph © Chris Musson & the Woolhope Naturalists' Field Club. Capler Camp   Capler Camp from the west   Only one site of this period has been excavated and excavations on Capler Iron Age hill-fort by G H Jack in July 1924 were, by modern standards, fairly inadequate. The defensive ditches at Capler are cut into rock and these and the banks enclose an interior area of 10.25 acres. During the Landscape Origins of the Wye Valley project a geophysical survey on Capler discovered one circular feature. This evidence is now being analysed. The English name is based on an early ‘cape’ which meant a look-out place.  Nearby, another area took the same name and now forms the parishes of Kings Caple and How Caple   Capler from the south   The interior of Capler     The Iron Age hill-forts in the study area. Cherry Hill in Fownhope parish is covered in woods; Gaer Cop in Hentland has been heavily ploughed down over the centuries. Capler in Brockhampton parish remains substantially intact.   Back to TOP

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