Bradfield Bailey Mound

The church of St Nicholas dates from the 15th century, but stands on the site of a older Norman structure. Until 1868 Bradfjeld was a chapel of ease dependent upon Ecciesfield Priory, whose monks served as chaplains paid by the vicar of Ecciesfield Church.
	The strange mounds behind the church are described by historians as a Norman "motte and bailey" castle supposedly thrown up in haste after the conquest of Hallamshire as a defensive fortification.
But the evidence of tradition throws doubt upon this theory. The historian Joseph Hunter described Bailey Hill as "a Saxon camp, as fair and perfect as when first constructed, save that the keep is overgrown with busbes . . . the date of this work is now impossible to ascertain; but it is obvious that so complete a work must have been formed not in haste, or to serve any temporary purpose, but to be used as a constant military post; one of the frontier barriers, it is probable of the Kingdom of Northumbria."
	Addy in his "Hall of Waltheof" (1895) said he had examined Bailey Hill carefully and concluded the evidence pointed away from a defensive purpose, more that the hfll was the former place of village assembly, law-giving and burial. Bailey Hill in fact consists of two artificial mounds, known as the round mound and the long mound, on a prominent high point above the undulating landscape in the valley below. The round mound is fifty feet in height and entirely surrounded by a deep trench.
	"The great earthwork," Addy wrote. "Was originally a burial mound, and afterwards doubtless the place of the old folk moot, or village assembly, and the scene of many a religious rite . . . the appearance of Bailey Hill, as you look down upon it from the fields above, is most characteristic of a large burial mound. It is like an enormous sugar-loaf, with a flattened top, and were its sides not overgrown with stunted trees the resemblance to a pyramid would be most striking."
The name of the village, first recorded in 1337 was "Kirkton". The first stone church was built here after the Norman conquest, probably during the 12th century, and the old name probably comes from the Anglo-Saxon "cyrictun", meaning not church but cemetery. Another name for fields near the mounds in 1637 was "Dead Man's Half Acre" , . . "Both these words," writes Addy, are the names of a prehistoric burial place of which Bailey Hill is the most conspicuous part." Many old churches, in particular those built before the Reformation, were built on prominent hilltops on top of or adjacent to earlier earthworks. The mounds adjoining the churchyards at Hathersage and Holmesfield, on the border region between South Yorkshire and Derbyshire (anciently Northumbria and Mercia) may also have originated in this way.
	In folklore, supernatural interference with building plans is used as an explanation as to why these churches were often built in remote places away from the settlements they served. In the 6th century AD, when Pope Gregory the Great sent his missionary Augustine to England to convert the Anglo-Saxons who had taken control of the islands after the fall of Rome, he gave explicit instructions that the pagan temples he found here should not be destroyed but "purified of demons" and used for the new religion. The opposition which the early missionaries encountered resulted in disputes about where new stone churches should be built.
At Bradfield is a folktale which suggests the first choice for the site of the parish church was in Low Bradfield at the foot of the hill where a crude Anglo-Saxon cross, decorated with a sun symbol, was unearthed in 1886. The story runs that work on the church here was disturbed each night, with the building materials being moved by supernatural means to Bailey Hill on the hillside above. This folktale indicates that High Bradfield, with its mystery mounds, was the centre of pagan worship in this remote moor- land district when the first Christians arrived. here during the "Dark Ages". The power of this strange and numinous place is perhaps reflected in the folktale which says there is a cache of treasure hidden deep inside Bailey Hill. Variations of this "siting legend" arc found in other parts of South Yorkshire.
	From Strange South Yorkshire by David Clarke. Published by Sigma Leisure, at £6.95
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