North Brabant unofficially called Brabant, is a province in the south of the Netherlands. It borders the provinces of South Holland and Gelderland to the north, Limburg to the east, Zeeland to the west, the Flemish provinces of Antwerp and Limburg to the south; the northern border follows the Meuse westward to its mouth in the Hollands Diep strait, part of the Rhine–Meuse–Scheldt delta. North Brabant has a population of 2,562,566 as of November 2019. Major cities in North Brabant are Eindhoven, Tilburg and its provincial capital's-Hertogenbosch; the Duchy of Brabant was a state of the Holy Roman Empire established in 1183 or 1190. It developed from the Landgraviate of Brabant and formed the heart of the historic Low Countries, part of the Burgundian Netherlands from 1430 and of the Habsburg Netherlands from 1482, until it was split up after the Dutch revolt. After the War of Independence, Catholics in the Southern Netherlands were systematically and discriminated against by the Northern Protestant government until the second half of the 19th century, which had a major influence on the economic and cultural development of the southern part of the Netherlands.

Present-day North Brabant was adjudicated to the Generality Lands of the Dutch Republic according to the 1648 Peace of Westphalia, while the reduced duchy remained in existence with the Southern Netherlands until it was conquered by French Revolutionary forces in 1794. Until the 17th century, the area that now makes up the province of North Brabant was part of the Duchy of Brabant, of which the southern part is now in Belgium. During the 14th and 15th centuries, the area experienced a golden age—especially the now-Belgian cities of Brussels, Mechelen and Antwerp, the now-Dutch cities of Breda, Bergen op Zoom and's-Hertogenbosch. After the Union of Utrecht was signed in 1579, Brabant became a battlefield between the Protestant Dutch Republic and Catholic Spain, which occupied the southern Netherlands; as a result of the Peace of Westphalia, the northern part of Brabant became part of the Netherlands as the territory of Staats-Brabant under federal rule, in contrast to the founding provinces of the Dutch Republic, which were self-governing.

Attempts to introduce Protestantism into the region were unsuccessful. For over a century, North Brabant served as a military buffer zone. In 1796, when the confederate Dutch Republic became the unitary Batavian Republic, Staats-Brabant became a province as Bataafs Brabant; this status ended with the reorganisation by the invading French, the area was divided into départements of Deux-Nèthes and Dyle. In 1815, Belgium and the Netherlands were united in the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, the province of North Brabant was established and so named to distinguish it from South Brabant in present-day Belgium, which seceded from the Kingdom in 1830; this boundary between the Netherlands and Belgium is special in that it does not form a contiguous line, but leaves a handful of tiny enclaves on both sides of the border. A few of these irregularities were corrected, Huijbergen became Dutch, but some remain, notably Baarle-Hertog and Baarle-Nassau; when the present province was instituted, its territory was expanded with a part of the province of Holland and the former territory of Ravenstein, which had belonged to the Duchy of Cleves, as well as several small autonomous entities.

The period from 1900 until the late 1960s is called Het Rijke Roomse Leven, an era of strong religious belief. Het Rijke Roomse Leven came about as result of the emancipatory drive of the province's disadvantaged Catholic population and was supported by a Roman Catholic pillar, directed by the clergy, not only encompassed churches, but Roman Catholic schools and hospitals, which were run by nuns and friars. In those days every village in North Brabant had a convent. Politically, the province was dominated by Catholic parties: the Roman Catholic State Party and its post-war successor, the Catholic People's Party, which held around 75% of the vote. In the 1960s secularisation and the actual emancipation of the Catholic population brought about the gradual dissolution of the Catholic pillar, as church attendance decreased in North Brabant as elsewhere in Western Europe; the influence of Het Rijke Roomse Leven remains in the form of education where some schools are still Roman Catholic and in North Brabant's culture, politics and customs, such as carnival.

Though the interpretation of the Roman Catholic identity in North Brabant has shifted during the last 65 years from religious to cultural, the province still has a distinct Catholic atmosphere when compared to the provinces north of the major rivers. A cultural divide is still found between the "Catholic" south and the "Protestant" north, but with a total of 1.5 million people and 20% of the industrial production in the Netherlands the southern "Catholic" area BrabantStad has become one of the major economically important, metropolitan regions of the Netherlands. As of 2010, Catholics were no longer a majority of the population in the province of North Brabant. Only 1–2% of the total population of the Catholic area attend mass, these churchgoers consist of people over 65 years old. With a populati

Highbury Hill in Clutton, England is the site of the earthwork remains of an Iron Age univallate hillfort. It occupies an area of woodland at the end of a narrow ridge, it is a Scheduled Ancient Monument, meaning that it is a nationally important archaeological site or historic building, given protection against unauthorised change. The 3 hectares site lies in an area of woodland at the south eastern end of a narrow ridge with steep slopes around it. There is a 0.5 metres outer bank, 8 metres long with a shallow 8 metres wide ditch. Some Roman silver coins were found at the site in the late 18th century. Hill forts developed in the Late Bronze and Early Iron Age the start of the first millennium BC; the reason for their emergence in Britain, their purpose, has been a subject of debate. It has been argued that they could have been military sites constructed in response to invasion from continental Europe, sites built by invaders, or a military reaction to social tensions caused by an increasing population and consequent pressure on agriculture.

The dominant view since the 1960s has been that the increasing use of iron led to social changes in Britain. Deposits of iron ore were located in different places to the tin and copper ore necessary to make bronze, as a result trading patterns shifted and the old elites lost their economic and social status. Power passed into the hands of a new group of people. Archaeologist Barry Cunliffe believes that population increase still played a role and has stated " provided defensive possibilities for the community at those times when the stress burst out into open warfare, but I wouldn't see them as having been built. They would be functional as defensive strongholds when there were tensions and undoubtedly some of them were attacked and destroyed, but this was not the only, or the most significant, factor in their construction". List of hill forts and ancient settlements in Somerset

Edgar Berkely Gifford, 4th Baron Gifford, was a British peer. He was the son of Robert Francis Gifford, 2nd Baron Gifford and Hon. Swinburne Frederica Charlotte FitzHardinge Berkeley, daughter of Admiral Maurice Berkeley, 1st Baron FitzHardinge, he was a Lieutenant in the South Gloucestershire Militia. He succeeded in the barony on 5 June 1911, he married daughter of Lt.-Col. William Aitchison, 5 June had issue: Hon. Serena Mary Gifford, he died on 29 January 1937 at age 79, without male issue and was succeeded in the Barony by his nephew. Lodge, Edmund; the Peerage and Baronetage of the British Empire as at Present Existing. London: Hurst and Blackett. Http://www.thepeerage.com/p7939.htm