EDDISBURY Hill is slowly revealing its iron age secrets as a team of archeaologists and volunteers dig to the past. Guardian chief reporter Gina Bebbington ventured up the hill, at Delamere Forest, on Thursday to see what had been uncovered as the excavation neared its fourth week.

THE first thing you notice as a visitor to the archaeological dig at Eddisbury Hill is the steep climb to the summit and the breathtaking view it commands across the Cheshire plain.

That is before your imagination is captured by the enormity of the entrance to the Iron Age hillfort, which has been painstakingly dug out of the hilltop during the past three weeks.

I have been fascinated by the progress of the dig while covering the story in the Guardian but had no idea of the scale of the hillfort until my visit.

Only half of the entrance has been uncovered so far, complete with three sets of smooth. round post holes, each about the size of a tree trunk.

Experts on site believe the entrance continues under a neighbouring potato field, which sits in the centre of the three-acre hillfort site, and expect to find three more pairs of post holes.

These would have been at the base of an imposing wooden tower, which together with high stone ramparts, would have been quite a sight in Iron Age Delamere.

Dan Garner, Habitats and Hillforts project officer, said: “It’s on a fairly prominent hill – you can imagine that a historic person wandering on the lower ground would always have it in mind because it stands out in the landscape.”

The team is re-excavating trenches that were originally opened up in the 1930s and has been pleasantly surprised by its findings so far.

Dan, who has worked in archaeology in Cheshire for about 20 years, said: “We’ve exceeded our expectations in as much as when you come back to re-excavate you expect a certain level of destruction.

“But the entrance has been preserved to a far higher standard than we expected.”

The project was originally set to finish at the end of this week, but landowner Michael Platt has said the team can dig beneath the potato field after the harvest.

He said: “We knew it was here because my father always talked about it – we’ve been here since the 1940s.

“We bought the land from a chap who knew quite a bit about it, he must have been here during the 1930s dig.

“I think it’s all very interesting, we have wondered what’s under the field.”

The team has also been focussing on the ramparts and has established that the inner ditch was about six metres wide and two metres deep while the outer ditch was about five metres wide and more than three metres in depth.

Archaeologists are also hoping to find wood charcoal, which they will be able to use to get radio carbon dates for the ramparts.

They are also looking for evidence of what the hillfort was used for.