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Calling all armchair generals! Boudica's Last Stand.
The point where the valley opens up to the plain is close to the canal and White House Farm at SP 32260 95207 (red dot in plans at the foot of the message). Margaret selects this point I am not sure Webster was ever that precise, his diagram which Margaret quotes has no valley.

The valley in question is narrow, the side relatively shallow, with a 10-15m vertical range over 100m at the mouth. This will vary a bit, I measured the knoll NE of White House Farm to the valley bottom. The slope angle is relatively typical of all but the steep ridge top which is really too steep to deploy on and neither Margaret or Webster are suggesting this.

So the slope angle is low, valley bottom narrow. The site can be outflanked and over looked rather easily and the field of view for a commander would have been extremely compromised. I see the networks of valleys supposedly concealing Romans as more of a blind, death trap for those same forces.

The best views would be from the White House Farm Drive or the Canal (I have been to neither I stayed on the A5 and went around Hartshill), all other views are compromised by woodland and hedgerows.

   

   
This one is a 3d Lidar model of the valley mouth seen from the North. I believe it shows the lack of height and slope angle that makes the candidate unlikely, but also how easy it would be to take any defending force from the flanks. Once out of the valley it is a simple field battle that would not go well for the Romans on a numerical basis, but this seems to be one of the potentials advanced in Fig 16 of Margaret's book.

   

   

But Mancetter does not seem to be shifting as the go-to location for the battle in either academia or popular culture, I guess it's a case of the persistence of myth over science.... I won't be making any special trips to shoot Mancetter but if I am in the area I will pop along the tow path for some pictures.

548,313

I've never really bothered to look at the site geology at Mancetter. Michael Wood described it as a "Quartzite Ridge" and Margaret uses the geology in her fig 7 describing a minor fault forming the engagement valley in a 1914 geological map. So for the record, it is NOT a "Quartzite Ridge"* it appears to be comprised of sedimentary, mainly shale, bedrock with Ordovician Lamprophyre intrusions of Silica poor magma, so not really a "quartzite". Whilst the fault may well be there it has not made it through to the BGS map I was looking at and doesn't seem to hold any significance to the battle other than as the ancient origin of one of the small valleys.

   

* but Michael Wood is forgiven for this as it was just TV and who knows what the editors do to you... but not forgiven for starting this addiction when I was in primary school.....

I have criticised Mancetter for valley size, slope height and slope gradient. Here is a direct comparison to scale of the whole Mancetter area (remember lower slope first 3 contour lines -15m) alongside a small section of the CS site. Mancetter could fit into the small corner of CS near Castle Dykes. The height gain and steepness of CS could only be matched at Mancetter if the engagement started far higher up the slope. In terms of Valley we are talking fundamentally different scales. If each combatant on the Iceni side had 1 m2 that would be 25 ha, a good fit for the CS bowl an impossibility at Mancetter unless 90% of the force never entered the valley. Height gain at CS 40m, height gain at Mancetter 15m.

CS is a Battlefield scale valley, Mancetter is a minor skirmish scale ravine.

   
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Messages In This Thread
Re: Calling all armchair generals! - by Ensifer - 03-11-2010, 03:13 PM
Re: Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by Steve Kaye - 02-18-2012, 06:26 PM
Re: Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by Steve Kaye - 02-19-2012, 12:02 AM
Re: Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by Steve Kaye - 02-19-2012, 02:50 PM
Re: Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by Steve Kaye - 02-19-2012, 05:40 PM
Re: Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by Steve Kaye - 02-19-2012, 11:26 PM
Re: Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by Steve Kaye - 04-24-2012, 05:11 PM
Re: Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by Steve Kaye - 04-24-2012, 09:42 PM
Re: Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by Steve Kaye - 04-24-2012, 10:10 PM
Re: Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by Steve Kaye - 04-25-2012, 03:11 PM
Re: Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by Steve Kaye - 04-25-2012, 03:25 PM
Re: Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by Steve Kaye - 04-25-2012, 08:36 PM
Re: Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by Steve Kaye - 04-26-2012, 02:57 PM
Re: Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by Steve Kaye - 04-27-2012, 01:50 PM
Re: Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by Steve Kaye - 08-05-2012, 02:24 PM
Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by antiochus - 11-07-2014, 02:18 PM
Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by antiochus - 11-08-2014, 01:50 AM
Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by antiochus - 11-11-2014, 02:03 AM
Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by antiochus - 11-18-2014, 07:54 AM
Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by antiochus - 11-20-2014, 02:37 AM
Calling all armchair generals! Boudica\'s Last Stand. - by antiochus - 11-25-2014, 08:29 AM
RE: Calling all armchair generals! Boudica's Last Stand. - by John1 - 11-18-2020, 08:06 PM

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