h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: Olivers Battery Hill Fort Hampshire 235449 - A87789721
Author: bobstafford - U3151547

Hello Please comment number 2 of a set of hillfort entries

This may interest you - http://www.pasthorizonspr.com/index.php/archives/01/2011/winchesters-civil-war-defences-discovered

There was also a Oliver's Battery near Basingstoke which was used during the exceptionally bloody siege of Basing House. The battery is now under a housing estate. I took part in the rescue dig there which found the skeltons of two parlimentarian soildiers one with his hobnailed "start-up" boots still on and one with a musket ball lodged in his ribs. The battery was built on top of the mound of a long abandoned medieval farm which overlay Saxon and Roman farm steads and a Bronze Age round barrow with Iron Age child burials it's ring ditch.

Thank you for that that is most interesting I think I have a vague memory of the name of it but I had forgotten all about it. i did not know what it was it was just a name on a housing estate

Cool. Another special site.

Is it 'Olivers Battery' or 'Oliver's Battery'? Spostrophes help here.

Bloomin spell check

what about the rest of it

It's fine, but kind of harmless.

If you leave it as is, the only people who read it will be people who are planning to visit the site - which isn't me, because I'm not anywhere close.

If you could put something above the first header other than that it's a historic site - something that grabs the reader's attention - everybody would read it.

Pick out the most interesting fact about the place and start with that.

I shall have a look

This needs a bit of proof reading, but it's all there apart from that. The second para seems to be repeated later on, and I think it's better later on as the info therein is a little dry for the intro.

If you wanted to spice it up, you could kick it off by describing something of the lives of the people who lived there, personalise it so to speak. I'm not sure how far you could go before Dmitri calls time on it for being fiction, but it might be fun to find out.

Sorry - posted too soon. Just wanted to add that I like the tone of the writing, which is accessible but not dry or oversimplified.

Any better now

Any more comments

Hi Bob. Sorry, I nearly missed this.

I think it gives an interesting and lively account of the everyday life of the people of the hill fort.

But I think the first paragraph would be clearer and give a more interesting opening if it was reordered. Something like this -
"Oliver's Battery is a splendid Iron Age hill fort, built on a chalk hill overlooking the ancient city of Winchester. Unusually for a hill fort, it is defended on the western side by the River Itchen. In this position, it guards the north-south route along the river. The hill, properly known as St Catherine's Hill, is 318 feet high and about a mile south of the city."

You've also mentioned St Chatherine's Chapel twice.

altered hows that thanks for that

Although you've put in the sentences I suggested, you've not taken out the orginal ones, so you've made the same statements twice! You need to take out the second and third sentences. You can put the statement about the fort being a scheduled Ancient Monument in the 2nd paragraph.

I hope all is done

That's better!

any other ideas

I read through this morning and liked it. If I visited I would print it out and take it with me

Well done

Thank you Peanut high praise indeed