Castle grounds
 Jill
Eyers talks about the Mammoths that roamed in the grounds
Prehistoric:
Stand at the top of the Motte at Wallingford Castle. Look to the top
of the far Chalk hills, and try to imagine the river valley beneath you
being 'filled-in' 65 million years ago. The top of the Chalk hill would
have stretched far and wide as very flat land. Gradually vegetated and
occasionally criss-crossed by rivers, it would have begun to be eroded
gently.
Ice Age:
If you looked across here 2 million years ago you would still not see
the Thames of today, but you will have seen a massive braided river that
spread with numerous channels for miles.
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| Mammoths
walking over Wallingford |
But it was
the Ice Age that created the river between Wallingford and Goring, when
a massive ice sheet cut through the land half a million years ago.
By the end
of the Ice Age you would have been able to pick some flowers amongst what
had become quite rich vegetation. All this lovely greenery attracted the
Mammoth.
Stand here
12,000 years ago and you'd see a family of mammoths strolling along the
hilltop, along with bison, munching their way through the tundra vegetation.
 Island
Britain: Ten thousand years ago, and the climate has warmed up enough
to cause a big change in plant life here in Wallingford. Scrubland appears,
followed by birch and pine, then mixed deciduous woodland with oak, elm
and lime trees.
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| Flint
Axe |
Animals are
now making their home here such as the red deer, roe deer, wild boar,
wolves, foxes, the auroch, elk, and a mass of small rodents, as well as
- well, YOU! Yes humans finally arrived in Wallingford a mere 10,000 years
ago. Neanderthal people may well have walked on the very ground you're
standing on. Could this flint axe have belonged to one of your ancestors?
 Judy
Dewey talks about the history of the Castle
Stone
Age to Medieval: The people living here in the Mesolithic period,
10,000 years ago, would have been attracted to the river and so would
have started fishing to supplement their hunter-gatherer lifestyle. By
the Neolithic period, 6,5000 years ago, the first farmers settled here.
While if
you were around in the Bronze and Iron Age you'd have been fighting a
lot more with your neighbours and moving into hillfort settlements. Wallingford
becomes extremely important when we reach the Anglo-Saxon period.
In fact "Wallingford"
derives its name from this period of time. Named after their leader, and
derived from ingas meaning "people of", the name translates
as "Wealh's peoples ford". Underneath part of the grass banks
are hidden 12th century cob houses (made of mud and straw). Wallingford castle was built
after Norman Conquest in 1066, as ordered by William the Conqueror. It
became one of the strongest in country. Cromwell destroyed it stone by
stone after his victory in the civil war, so all you can see today are
the earthworks on which walls once stood.
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