A POSSIBLE Iron Age oven is just one of the artefacts that have been uncovered following the first excavation of Oswestry's Iron Age hillfort for 80 years.

With permission from Historic England a team of local volunteers from English Heritage and Oswestry Heritage Gateway (OHG) completed a week-long dig at the fortress.

Under the leadership of local archaeologist Tim Malim, from Hampton Heritage Design & Consultancy Ltd, the team cut two trenches across the top and bottom ramparts to investigate how they had been constructed and to take samples for scientific dating by the University of Oxford’s Research Laboratory for Archaeology & the History of Art.

A spokesman said: "The higher rampart has not survived to a great height and is now used as a footpath around the interior.

"But the team found that it had been constructed with a stone revetment wall on the inside and with a stone facing to the outside, with clay and stones compacted into a hard core in the centre.

"The structure had been infilled and the back wall covered over by a solid mixture of stone and clay making a bank five metres in width but of unknown height.

“The lower rampart was built in a very different way, consisting of dumps of clay and stone to make a single large bank four metres wide and 1.5m high.

"A double line of stones with a gap between them was found to the rear of the bank which may have formed a back edge, perhaps with timber uprights wedged between the stone rows.

"Although very steep at the front, the Iron Age engineers must have understood the optimum slope to avoid the bank slipping down into the ditch below.

"The results are looking very promising, with probable roundhouses and their ditched boundary plots showing, as well as other structures and historic ploughing.

"A possible oven has been detected, close to the location where a bronze working crucible was found in the 1939-40 excavations.

"Air photographs and an aerial photogrammetric survey and 3D model have been previously undertaken for OHG, and although these show the condition of the monument today, the buried historic details they reveal appear to be from the First World War practice trenches which were excavated by soldiers training for the front while based at Park Hall."

The team believe it will be some months before analysis provides dates for the ramparts, but say the details from the geophysical survey is already giving a good insight into how the interior might have been used during the Iron Age.

It also gives a plan on which future investigation can be targeted.

The spokesman continued: "OHG volunteers will be continuing to work with English Heritage to manage the site over the coming year, and the introduction of a flock of Soay-Hebridean sheep to the southern ramparts is helping to keep the scrub vegetation under better control.

An OHG spokesman said: "The OHG embraces a multi-phase archaeological landscape from Brogyntyn to Whittington as one of outstanding tourism and environmental value, as well as having significant potential to provide recreational, sustainable transport and community benefits.

"Ultimately, the OHG group seeks to partner with stakeholders to further develop the account of one of Britain’s most important hillforts, ‘The Stonehenge of the Iron Age’, which lies at its hub, and foster national and international recognition for this heritage jewel."