Over the past three days, much of Britain has been beaten and battered by what is likely the last of this year’s three named storms: Storm Bert.
It was on the windiest day of Bert's rampage that I found myself at the very top of Chanctonbury Ring, looming over the quaint town of Washington, trudging my way up to the treeline in what can only be described as gale-force winds.
I’m sure many of us, at some point in our lives, have attempted to lean into the wind.
While I still eventually bit the dust, I fared better than my rather aged grandfather, who had a less fortunate encounter with the winds and a protruding molehill.
However, the ominous creaking of the trees, protesting against the battle they were undergoing, made me reflect on the Iron Age fort buried just beneath the hill's surface.
How did those primitive architects cope with similarly brutal winds, without the aid of aggregate concretes or galvanized steel?
It seems that many factors came into play, ranging from location to building materials.
For example, these settlements were often built on elevated, defensible locations (such as Chanctonbury) with natural windbreaks embedded into the landscape, significantly dampening the effects of harsh winds.
The actual layout of the buildings was designed to be as compact as possible, with many houses interlocking to minimize the exposure of individual walls or buildings to the full force of the gales.
Locally sourced materials, like rock walls, were resistant to erosion, while timber framing added elasticity to the brittleness of the cobble.
Finally, any damage inflicted by storms or neighboring tribes was quickly and efficiently repaired by the villagers using primitive reinforcement techniques and tools.
In fact, many of their building methods are still used to this day, with newer techniques often having their roots in similar practices.
While not all settlements may have fared equally well under such conditions, the ingenuity of our early settlers is most certainly not to be underestimated.
