Maiden Castle, Dorset

Maiden Castle is the largest hillfort in Britain and one of the largest in Europe, a whole hilltop southwest of Dorchester wrapped in rings of grassy earthwork. At its greatest extent the enclosure covered about 19 hectares, an area English Heritage likens to fifty football pitches, and on the southern side the defences run to four banks and three ditches stacked one above the other. Walking the ramparts today, with sheep grazing in the ditches and the Dorset downs spread out on every side, the sheer scale of the labour is what strikes first: all of this was dug and heaped up by hand.

The hill was important long before the fort. Around 4000 BC Neolithic people built a causewayed enclosure on the summit, and later raised over it a bank barrow, a long mound some 546 metres in length, one of the most remarkable monuments of its kind. The Iron Age hillfort began around 600 BC as a modest enclosure of about 6 hectares; around 450 BC it was greatly extended to take in the whole hill and its ramparts heightened and multiplied. When fresh, the banks would have shone white with exposed chalk, visible for miles. The entrances are the masterpiece of the design, above all the eastern gate, a maze of overlapping banks forming a double entrance whose winding approach was unusual even among British hillforts. Inside, the people of the Durotriges lived in roundhouses set out in orderly rows, and excavators found hoards of sling stones and traces of iron working.

The story of the fort's end has been told and retold. Mortimer Wheeler and Tessa Verney Wheeler excavated here between 1934 and 1937, and Wheeler read a cemetery of late Iron Age burials, some with violent injuries, as a war cemetery left by a Roman assault in the 40s AD. That vivid account made the site famous, but later archaeologists have found little to support a single dramatic siege; the burials are now read as a formal cemetery rather than the aftermath of one battle. After the Roman conquest the hilltop was gradually abandoned, though in the late fourth century a small Romano-Celtic temple was built inside the ramparts. The fort has long stirred the imagination: Thomas Hardy drew on it, and in 1921 the composer John Ireland named a work, Mai-Dun, after it.

Getting there

Maiden Castle lies about 3.5 km southwest of the centre of Dorchester, the county town of Dorset, reached along Maiden Castle Road. The nearest airport is Bournemouth (BOH), about 45 km away. There is a small car park at the fort, which can fill up at busy times. English Heritage cares for the site. The ramparts are steep and the chalk can be slippery, and the hilltop is completely exposed, so bring sturdy shoes and something warm.