Credenhill

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Credenhill is a village and civil parish in Herefordshire, lying on the A480 road 4½ miles north-west of the city of Hereford.

Near Credenhill is the site of the former Royal Air Force station RAF Hereford, which is now the headquarters of 22 Special Air Service Regiment.

Credenhill has links to cider production, one of Herefordshire's key industries. In 1887 Percy Bulmer founded the Bulmers cider company. The then 20 year old son of the Reverend Charles Bulmer (rector at Credenhill) used apples from the rectory garden for the company's first produce. Thomas Traherne, the 17th-century English poet and religious writer, was rector of Credenhill for ten years.

[edit] Surrounding area

There is an Iron Age hill fort half a mile north of Credenhill. Archaeological finds are in Hereford Museum. The defences of this very large hill fort follow the 600 ft contour and enclose nearly 50 acres (200,000 m²). They comprise an embankment and ditch with a slight counter-scarp bank. There are traces of a quarry ditch inside the main rampart around most of the circuit. Original in-turned entrances are at the centre of the east side and at the south-east corner, each approached by a hollow way cut deeply into the hillside.

Trial excavation has shown that the internal quarry-ditch is 5-10 ft deep. Its gradual in-filling was found to include various occupation layers associated with rectangular wooden buildings with four corner posts, measuring about 12 x 8 ft (2.4 m), which had been rebuilt several times in the same place. There were also storage pits and other remains of occupation including pottery with stamped and incised patterns typical of the West Midlands Iron Age. Date, c. 400 BC; occupied continuously until about 75 AD. The fort and the surrounding ancient woodland are now part of the Woodland Trust.