Maiden Castle is an Iron Age hillfort 1.6 mi (2.6 km) southwest of Dorchester, in the English county of Dorset. Hill forts were fortified hill-top settlements constructed across Britain during the Iron Age.
Danebury is an Iron Age hillfort in Hampshire, England, about 19 kilometres (12 mi) north-west of Winchester. The site, covering 5 hectares, was excavated by Barry Cunliffe in the 1970s. Danebury is considered a type-site for hill forts, and was important in developing the understanding of hillforts, as very few others have been so intensively excavated.
Oldbury Camp is the largest Iron Age hill fort in south-eastern England. It was built in the 1st century BC by Celtic British tribes on a hilltop west of Ightham, Kent, in a strategic location overlooking routes through the Kentish Weald. The fort comprises a bank and ditch enclosing an area of about 50 hectares, with entrances at the north-east and south ends. Wooden gates barred the entrances. Archaeological excavations carried out in the 1930s and 1980s found that the hill fort's interior had probably not been permanently occupied. It had been abandoned around 50 BC and the north-east gate had been burned down, possibly due to a Roman invasion. The wooded southern part of Oldbury Camp is now owned and managed by the National Trust and is open to the public.
Stanwick Iron Age Fortifications, a huge Iron Age hill fort, sometimes but not always considered an oppidum, comprising over 9 kilometres (5.6 mi) of ditches and ramparts enclosing approximately 300 hectares of land, are situated in Richmondshire, North Yorkshire, England. Whether Stanwick was the stronghold of Venutius or Cartimandua, or perhaps of them both for a brief time before their acrimonious split some time after 51 AD, it is certain that this settlement was one of the most important in Brigantia, the Brigantes kingdom during the early stages of the Roman occupation of Britain. The site is a scheduled monument.
Embury Beacon is the site of an Iron Age promontory fort on the west of the Hartland Peninsula, north of Bude and west of Clovelly, in north Devon. The fort has almost entirely been lost to coastal erosion, but a fraction of the eastern ramparts still exist at approximately 150 metres (490 ft) above Sea Level. It is part of the National Trust property of Bideford Bay and Hartland, which also includes two other hill forts at Windbury Head and Bucks Mills earthworks. The site's name suggests it was the location of a beacon, possibly during the Elizabethan period, but there is no archaeological evidence of this.
The Trundle is an Iron Age hillfort on St Roche's Hill about 4 miles (6 km) north of Chichester, West Sussex, England. It was built on the site of a causewayed enclosure, a form of early Neolithic earthwork found in northwestern Europe. Causewayed enclosures were built in England from shortly before 3700 BC until at least 3500 BC; they are characterized by the full or partial enclosure of an area with ditches that are interrupted by gaps, or causeways. Their purpose is not known; they may have been settlements, meeting places, or ritual sites. Hillforts were built as early as 1000 BC, in the Late Bronze Age, and continued to be built through the Iron Age until shortly before the Roman occupation.
Burrough Hill is an Iron Age hillfort in Burrough on the Hill, 7 miles (11 km) south of Melton Mowbray in the English county of Leicestershire. Situated on a promontory about 210 metres (690 ft) above sea level, the site commands views over the surrounding countryside for miles around. There has been human activity in the area since at least the Mesolithic, and the hillfort was founded in the early Iron Age. In the medieval period, after the hillfort was abandoned, the hill was used as farmland. This ended in the 17th century when the parish the hill was in was enclosed. Traces of ridge and furrow show where the medieval fields were ploughed. Since the 1930s the site has been the subject of archaeological investigations and renewed excavations under the auspices of the University of Leicester began in 2010. Part of Burrough Hill Country Park and open to the public, the hillfort is protected as a Scheduled Ancient Monument.
Mellor hill fort is a prehistoric site in North West England dating from the British Iron Age – about 800 BC to 100 AD. Situated on a hill in Mellor, Greater Manchester, on the western edge of the Peak District, the hill fort overlooks the Cheshire Plain. Although the settlement was founded during the Iron Age, evidence exists of activity on the site as far back as 8,000 BC; during the Bronze Age the hill may have been an area where funerary practices were performed. Artefacts such as a Bronze Age amber necklace indicate the site was high status and that its residents took part in long-distance trade. The settlement was occupied into the Roman period. After the site was abandoned, probably in the 4th century, it was forgotten until its rediscovery in the 1990s.
Eddisbury hill fort, also known as Castle Ditch, is an Iron Age hill fort near Delamere, Cheshire, in northern England. Hill forts are fortified hill-top settlements constructed across Britain during the Iron Age. Eddisbury is the largest and most complex of the seven hill forts in the county of Cheshire. It was constructed before 200–100 BC and expanded in 1–50 AD. In the 1st century AD, the Romans slighted the site. It was reoccupied in the 6th–8th centuries AD, and an Anglo-Saxon burh was probably established at Eddisbury in 914. In the medieval and post-medieval periods quarrying and farming have damaged the site. Ownership is currently split between the Forestry Commission and a local farm. Eddisbury is protected as a Scheduled Ancient Monument.
Buckland Rings is the site of an Iron Age hill fort in the town of Lymington, Hampshire. Today, the mounds and dykes around the outside which once constituted its defences are still clearly visible, although the outer bank lies under the road on the west side, and on the south-east it is nearly ploughed-out. Excavations of the inner and middle ramparts in 1935 revealed that they were of wall-and-fill construction, retained at the front by upright timber beams and walls of cut and laid turf. The entrance, which lies on the east side, was also excavated revealing a long entrance passage and the postholes for a pair of stout gateposts. The site was bought by Hampshire County Council in 1989 to ensure its preservation, and it is open to the public from the A337 road onto which part of it faces.
Blewburton Hill is the site of an Iron Age hillfort located in Oxfordshire, in the southeast of England. It was a univallate hillfort. The area is mostly farmland with some small areas of wooded copse to the south and the northeast. The hill fort may have been occupied from the 4th century BC to the 1st century BC, and replaced a small settlement surrounded by a stockade, which is estimated to have been built in the 5th or 6th century BC.
Battlesbury Camp is the site of an Iron Age bivallate hill fort on Battlesbury Hill near the town of Warminster in Wiltshire, South West England. Excavations and surveys at the site have uncovered various finds and archaeological evidence.
Hillforts in Britain refers to the various hillforts within the island of Great Britain. Although the earliest such constructs fitting this description come from the Neolithic British Isles, with a few also dating to later Bronze Age Britain, British hillforts were primarily constructed during the British Iron Age. Some of these were apparently abandoned in the southern areas that were a part of Roman Britain, although at the same time, those areas of northern Britain that remained free from Roman occupation saw an increase in their construction. Some hillforts were reused in the Early Middle Ages, and in some rarer cases, into the Later Medieval period as well. By the early modern period, these had essentially all been abandoned, with many being excavated by archaeologists in the nineteenth century onward.
Whitehawk Camp is the remains of a causewayed enclosure on Whitehawk Hill near Brighton, East Sussex, England. Causewayed enclosures are a form of early Neolithic earthwork that were built in England from shortly before 3700 BC until at least 3500 BC, characterized by the full or partial enclosure of an area with ditches that are interrupted by gaps, or causeways. Their purpose is not known; they may have been settlements, or meeting places, or ritual sites. The Whitehawk site consists of four roughly concentric circular ditches, with banks of earth along the interior of the ditches evident in some places. There may have been a timber palisade on top of the banks. Outside the outermost circuit there are at least two more ditches, one of which is thought from radiocarbon evidence to date to the Bronze Age, about two thousand years after the earliest dated activity at the site.
Warham Camp is an Iron Age circular hill fort with a total diameter of 212 metres near Warham, south of Wells-next-the-Sea in Norfolk. It is a scheduled monument dated to between 800BC and 43AD, and a 5.1-hectare (13-acre) biological Site of Special Scientific Interest, located within the Norfolk Coast Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The University of East Anglia has described it as the best-preserved hill fort in Norfolk.
Caerau Hillfort is a large triangular multivallate Iron Age hillfort, built on a previously occupied Neolithic site, occupying the western tip of an extensive ridge-top plateau in the western suburbs of Caerau and Ely, Cardiff, Wales. It is the largest Iron Age site of its type in south Wales and also one of the largest in Great Britain. The old parish church, St Mary's, and a small ringwork, almost certainly a medieval castle site probably contemporary with the church, stand within the hillfort on the north-eastern side.
Hillforts in Scotland are earthworks, sometimes with wooden or stone enclosures, built on higher ground, which usually include a significant settlement, built within the modern boundaries of Scotland. They were first studied in the eighteenth century and the first serious field research was undertaken in the nineteenth century. In the twentieth century there were large numbers of archaeological investigations of specific sites, with an emphasis on establishing a chronology of the forts. Forts have been classified by type and their military and ritual functions have been debated.
Caesar's Camp is an Iron Age hill fort straddling the border of the counties of Surrey and Hampshire in southern England. The fort straddles the borough of Waverley in Surrey and the borough of Rushmoor and the district of Hart, both in Hampshire. Caesar's Camp is a Scheduled Ancient Monument with a list entry identification number of 1007895. It lies approximately 3 kilometres (1.9 mi) north of the town of Farnham, and a similar distance west of Aldershot. The hillfort lies entirely within the Bourley and Long Valley Site of Special Scientific Interest. Caesar's Camp is a multivallate hillfort, a fort with multiple defensive rings, occupying an irregular promontory, with an entrance on the south side. The site has been much disturbed by military activity, especially at the southeast corner. The remains of the hillfort are considered to be of national importance.
Trevelgue Head, also known as Porth Island, is a headland north-east of Newquay, Cornwall, England, next to Porth at the eastern end of Newquay Bay.
Beacon Hill, also known as Harting Beacon, is a hillfort on the South Downs, in the county of West Sussex in southern England. The hillfort is located in the parish of Elsted and Treyford, in Chichester District. It is a Scheduled Ancient Monument with a list entry identification number of 1015915. The hilltop enclosure is dated to the Late Bronze Age, from the 8th to 6th centuries BC. The hillfort defences were renewed during the Late Iron Age.
