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Hambledon Hill
Halcyon days
13 May 2012
Hambledon Hill is celebrated in today's Observer, here, with a story - entitled 'How stone-age man invented the art of raving' - which concludes that the chieftains of the day would hold the equivalent of today's raves or Glastonburys. No great surprise to me: the Hill was a magnet for me when I was at Bryanston School in Dorset.
Several us would head out on our bikes on a weekend, through nearby Durweston, buying a flagon or two of cider along the way, and then climbing over the massive earthworks to the very top, from whence we could survey the rest of the world and laze under the swirling eyes of hawks. Listening to the distant thrum of combine harvesters - and the chime of church bells. And we might even havepassed a Breathalyser test on the way home, had such a test existed at the time. Rather decorous by the standards of today's raves.
If I had to pick just one place that somehow captures the essence of my young years, it would be Hambledon Hill. I loved the small copse of yew trees on one flank, which I always assumed was a relic of a sacred grove of some sort, but may simply have sprouted from bird droppings. Less cheerily, and something I didn't know at the time, parts of the Hill were used in the early days for the purposes of 'corpse exposure'.
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