Stockleigh and Clifton Camps

Last year I called at North Somerset’s Stokeleigh Camp. This is the site of a manmade settlement and fort which was occupied before the Roman invasions and conquest of these islands. One can still make out the earthwork walls behind which our ancestors felt themselves secure. Across the Avon Gorge on the Clifton side is the site of another fort, Clifton Down (bottom). Geographically, the forts were sited perhaps half a mile from the other, but the impressive gorge, over which Brunel’s Suspension Bridge crosses, rendered them further apart. A third fort was sited a mile further down the gorge at Brugh Walls. I suspect they belonged to different Brittonic tribes, or clans within the Dubunni people. They may have cautiously eyed each other across that great chasm, carefully guarding and maintaining their respective territories. Yet when the Romans properly arrived in AD43, these divisions would only have weakened their defences; the Dubunni and their hillforts were no match to the superpower that was Rome. Their petty rivalries, if such existed, would have played into the enemy’s hands.

I marvel that many Christians today, like the tribesmen living in the growing menace of Rome, are not united and facing a common enemy, be it aggressive secularism, woke ideology or radical false counterfeit religion. A horribly wicked world government is being planned and constructed, behind which Satan himself pulls the strings. That the Lord’s people might be found bickering rather than withstanding wickedness in high places, is more tragic than iron age tribesmen glowering across Avon Gorge, even while the Emperor’s legions and seige engines were crossing the Channel.