The Hill Fort

The Tasburgh hill fort stands on the edge of higher ground overlooking the valleys of the River Tas and the Hempnall stream. It is now generally accepted that it dates from the iron-age, but until the 1930s it was thought to have been a Roman military station called Ad Taum, a name which at the time even appeared on the Ordnance Survey maps. As early as 1600 the enclosure was being referred to as Roman, but we have to blame Dr. Thomas Gale, Dean of York, for the name. In 1709 he published his conclusions of a study he had made of a Roman text (the Antonine Itineries) and map (the Tabula Peutingeria) which included the outline of a journey from Chelmsford to Venta Icenorum, the Roman town at Caister St. Edmund, giving place names and distances between them. Unfortunately the western part of the map covering most of England had been lost, and the join was just where Caister would have been. However just on the edge of the map was a group of six letters on three lines - ad, ta, um - which Dr Gale decided had to be the name of a place, Ad Taum, even though it was not mentioned in the text. From the location and distances marked on the map he concluded that this had to be somewhere close to Caister, and the enclosure at Tasburgh, just off the Roman Road, seemed to fit.

This attribution was repeated by Francis Blomfield in his History of Norfolk published almost 100 years later and by all subsequent commentaries until the 1930s by when the enclosure was described as a British fort, known to the Romans as Ad Taum. Only later was it realised that the Roman map had in fact correctly shown the location of the Roman town at Caister, but that most of the name had appeared on the missing part of the map, and what Dr Gale had seen was the Roman word, ad, meaning "to", and then the last two letters of Venta and Icenorum. After that, there were no more references to Tasburgh's Roman camp of Ad Taum, but an investigation carried out within the fort before the churchyard was extended did find evidence of a possible Roman building or farmstead in the form of a quantity of tiles, some pottery and a Roman coin.

An earlier excavation across the line of the ploughed out defences on the western side had shown that the ditch would have been about three metres deep, and with a similar height embankment, it would have made an impressive sight. Given that the area enclosed is just over six hectares, the largest hill fort in Norfolk, the man power required for its construction would have been considerable, so it is unlikely to have been a quick response to a particular threat. Further, being the only hill fort in South Norfolk and with only a small amount of archaeological evidence of iron-age occupation, it may have been more of a meeting point for a wider area rather than just a local fortification. The fact that Tasburgh sits on the junction of and in the geographical centre of the three Saxon hundreds or administrative areas of Depwade, Henstead and Humbleyard is probably significant.  Indeed, archaeological investigations point to a much greater use in Anglo-Saxon times, with not only houses but also a pottery kiln and a network of ditches indicating farming activity. It is therefore not so surprising that Tasburgh's church with its late Saxon round tower was built within the hill fort enclosure, rather than closer to the later concentration of housing along the valley floor.

In 1994 the site was acquired by the Norfolk Archaeological Trust to save it from further plough damage, having been mainly part of Old Hall Farm for at least two hundred years. On the strip of land to the north of the wooded bank, a ridge marks the line of an old field boundary bank and hedge which divided the Old Hall Farm land from that of Cottage Farm on Low Road. The Trust's website has a more detailed account of the fort's early history but, as a Scheduled Ancient Monument, we cab feel reassured that this central area of the village will not now be built over.