Uffington Castle

On the crown of Whitehorse Hill, at about 261 metres the highest ground in Oxfordshire, a great oval of grassy ramparts encloses roughly three hectares of chalk downland. Uffington Castle is one of the finest Iron Age hillforts in southern England, and it shares its hilltop with two of Britain's most haunting prehistoric landmarks: the stylised chalk horse galloping across the slope just below, and the flat-topped knoll of Dragon Hill. Together they form a single ancient landscape strung along the Ridgeway, the age-old track that follows the crest of the Berkshire Downs above the Vale of White Horse.

Excavations led by the Oxford Archaeological Unit in the 1990s suggest the fort was raised in the 8th or 7th century BC, on ground already used in the Bronze Age. Its builders dug a V-shaped ditch and piled the spoil into banks topped with timber posts; later the ditch was deepened and the inner rampart heightened and faced with blocks of sarsen stone. Today the inner bank is still around 12 metres wide, and the enclosure measures some 220 by 160 metres, with its original entrance on the west. Few traces of houses have been found inside, but pottery, loom weights and animal bones show that people lived or gathered here, and activity revived in the Roman period, when the ramparts were cut with new gateways and a small shrine appears to have stood within. Burial mounds holding Romano-British and Saxon dead lie close by.

The White Horse, some 110 metres from nose to tail, was cut into the hillside during the late Bronze Age or early Iron Age, making it by far the oldest of Britain's chalk hill figures; its flowing, almost abstract lines recall the horses on Iron Age coins. For centuries local people kept it white by periodic scouring, an occasion that turned into a festival with games inside the fort. Local tradition holds that Dragon Hill, the bare-topped mound below, is where St George slew the dragon, and that grass has never grown where its blood was spilled. The fort itself was among the first monuments in Britain to receive legal protection, under the Ancient Monuments Protection Act of 1882.

Getting there

Uffington Castle lies on the Ridgeway south of the village of Uffington, about 11 km west of Wantage. The nearest larger towns are Swindon, roughly 16 km to the west, and Carterton, about 21 km to the north. Swindon and Didcot Parkway are the closest main-line railway stations. The airport named nearest by distance is Southampton Airport (SOU), about 71 km away; London Heathrow is the main international gateway for the area and is linked by rail to Didcot and Swindon. The final approach is by road from the B4507, or on foot along the Ridgeway National Trail.