Philobiblon

I reached the ancient Gallic hill fort of Bibract by what might be called the scenic route, over the top of the plateau from Chateau Chinon – there was a sign on the road saying something about snow tyres. Ha, I scoffed, it is not nearly that cold. I was right, but only just – as the following picture shows. There’s a cross country skying club hut at the top and if the road wasn’t icy it wasn’t far off it – just goes to show that you really shouldn’t let clueless Australians wander around the wilder parts of Europe.

Anyway, made it eventually and found the museum, not much to my surprise, isn’t open until mid-March, but the site is open access, so off I set to wander within the 5.3kms of ramparts, enclosing 135 hecatres – in which I managed to get fairly spectacularly lost , not having a map since the museum and shop were closed – still I did learn a possibly useful piece of info – even the steep hills here covered with millennium of leaf mulch are remarkably stable – very handy for scrambling.

I also got a sense of the different forest landscapes – the coniferous bits – mostly, I’d guess planted – certainly most of them are – are pretty sterile in the understorey, as are perhaps more surprisingly the native? Broadleaves, which I think are beech (please someone tell me if I’m wrong, I’m not very good on European trees). There is sometimes a loose understorye of holly – together this makes a beautiful coloured picture, with the moss on the trunks.

First “sight” is the grand, heavily reconstructed entrance gate. Caesar (who is thought to have spent several nights here – although they’ve resisted the “slept here” sign temptation – said: “This work…with alternate balks and stones which keep their proper courses in straight lines … is eminently suitable for the practical defence of cities.”

Around the rest of the site these are simply two steep earth banks, several metres high now, and several metres wide – you certainly souldn’t fancy storming them even now.

There’s a great deal of excavation going on at the site now – German and Hungarian teams keeping up the European theme. One of the biggest areas though is of the medieval site here.

There’s a great deal of work also going on to make this a grand display, I suspect – mostly mud at the moment, with odd items popping up such as this pipe and drainage. Unlabelled, but they may be medieval.

For this is in the area known as the pasture of the convent, which housed a rather unlucky Franciscan monastery. They were usually an urban order, but the move here seems to have been part of the reforms of Saint Colette. It seems to have lived mostly off the Mt Beauvray fair, which was a major local event on the first Wednesday in May. (Given the climb up the hill, I guess that you could be sure any livestock you bought were in decent condition!)

But the convent was destroyed by fire in 1538, rebuilt straight away thanks to a monk’s donation (whatever happened to the vow of poverty?), it was burnt down again in 1573 by Calvinist troops, but again restored, appearing on a map of 1627. But by 1725 there were only ruins.

Over the hill is what is known as the deer park quarter, which boasts a spectacular first century Roman house, built on several earlier humbler Gallic and earlier Roman layers. (Probably where the “Caesar slept here sign should go.)

But it fell victim to the town planners. Augustus – who’d probably heard complaints from older Romans who’d had to climb the hill, founded what is now Autun on the plain nearby (river transport and less need for security no doubt also played a part) founded a replacement city nearby and Bibract seems to have died very quickly. The man who built the lovely wall, and the drainage system, was undoubtedly pissed off.

Nearby is this lovely, if humble, hut, where the 19th-century excavators who uncovered much of this lived, and now has a display about the modern history of the site, where excavations continued from 1867-1898, by the local landlord. It became so popular he had a tourist problem….

Heading down to the Fountain of Saint Peter, the signage explains that the presence of a number of springs on the mountain was what mad early mass habitation possible, this being fed by one of them. The oldest construction was a huge basin from the 1st-century BC – there were many other forms after that, including a medieval wooden one that fell apart in the 20th-century and was replaced by this.

Not hard to see why the area was, and probably still is, regarded, mystically – the local trees seem almost to cultivate a habitat to encourage that….

The forests on the hill rather oddly reminded me of the area around Jenolan Caves in Australia – in part for the many prominent species of moss and lichen. It reminded me of visiting that area with Mum when I was about 13, when I was right into the classification of mosses and lichens, and inflicted long expositions on the subject on poor mum (yes, I was an odd teenager…)

Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately for you, dear reader, I’ve forgotten the details, but will share pictures of this underrated flora….

Next on the roughly anticlockwise circuit of the site is what is known as the Chaum, a big flat terrace that was the site of the medieval fare – first documented in 1220 and still going strong in the mid-19th century. Slightly odd really, because this was probably the Gallic religious centre – some of the trees being, it is said, the oldest on the hill, perhaps dating back to that time – if beech live that long? It was never built on in those times, and there was a simple Gallo-Roman temple roughly where there is now a small chapel – where visitors have, in curious circularity, left offerings of holly.

Great view from the top, where the 19th-century excavator has a memorial, although it wasn’t the day for panoramic pictures.