Maiden Castle: Iron Age Settlement

Its earthen ramparts enclose an area of over 19 hectares – the equivalent of 19 rugby pitches!

Between about 400 and 200 BC, at the height of its Iron Age occupation, the hillfort would have been densely packed with houses, roads and storage buildings and bustling with people and their livestock.

This community was part of the Durotriges tribe who lived in modern Dorset and parts of Wiltshire, Somerset and Devon.

The first hillfort was built in the early Iron Age (800–550 BC), enclosing the eastern end of the hill with a single bank and V-shaped ditch.

It was densely populated, with many roundhouses and large storage pits for grain. Activities such as textile-making and metalworking took place.

Throughout the Iron Age, the hillfort was constantly modified to suit the changing needs of its inhabitants.

In the middle Iron Age (550–300 BC), a much larger area was enclosed and the ramparts were made much larger and more elaborate. Once randomly organised, the houses were now built in regimented rows.

By about 400 BC, Maiden Castle had become the preeminent settlement and political centre of the Durotriges tribe.

Its impressive, dominant ramparts were a symbol of the importance of this group, and their construction united the growing community.

With the creation of the nearby Roman town of Dumovaria (modern Dorchester) at the end of the 1st century AD, the hillfort was abandoned.

A small Roman temple was later built on the hilltop in the 4th century AD, where hundreds of coins and several statues have been found.

Jointly directed by Sir Mortimer Wheeler, Tessa Wheeler and Colonel Charles Drew, these excavations took place at the hillfort each summer between 1934 and 1936. They employed a grid system of trench layout which regulated the trenches and made them accessible to the viewing public.

Seventeen areas of the site were excavated, with roundhouses, the temple, a cemetery and the ramparts all explored. The team identified the earlier hillfort and deduced the complex sequence of construction and enlargement.

Mortimer Wheeler’s evocative description of the history of the site became a classic piece of archaeological writing.

The excavations at Maiden Castle excited much public interest and were marketed as a visitor attraction.

Money was raised for the project through donations, sales of postcards and a guidebook, and – most controversially – selling finds such as slingshot pebbles, pottery and tile fragments.

One discovery was a late Iron Age cemetery of 52 individuals, some of whom had violent injuries. Mortimer Wheeler thought these were war graves, the result of an attack on the hillfort by the Roman army. However, the careful internment of individuals with grave goods suggests this was an ordinary cemetery.

In 1985 and 1986, further excavations took place at Maiden Castle led by Professor Niall Sharples.

These uncovered the Neolithic sequence, led to a re-interpretation of Wheeler’s ‘war cemetery’ and shifted away from a purely defensive explanation towards the idea that the hillfort was a symbol of community cohesion and domination.

As well as excavation, the 1980s research project included detailed surveys of the earthworks, geophysical surveys and research into the surrounding landscape.

These showed that the hillfort had been built at a junction of earlier major land divisions and showed the dense nature of the Iron Age occupation in the interior.

In the last few years, a radiocarbon dating project called Gathering Time has provided much more precise dates for the construction of the early Neolithic causewayed enclosure and bank barrow at Maiden Castle. It has shown that activity was relatively short-lived, taking place over no more than two generations.

More recent excavations as part of the Durotriges project, led by archaeologists from Bournemouth University, have revealed a previously unknown undefended Iron Age town 15 miles to the north-west.

This may be where Maiden Castle’s inhabitants lived after they left the hillfort in the late Iron Age.

No writer has evoked the Dorest landscape quite like Thomas Hardy. Using the fictional name of ‘Wessex’ for his home county, Hardy poured the sights, sounds and atmosphere of the local countryside into his famous 19th-century novels.

Hardy lived to see his novel adapted into a film by Sidney Morgan, and visited the actors and crew on set at Maiden Castle. He is seen here (second from left) on the set of the film production in 1921.

Nash's watercolour 'Maiden Castle' (1943) emphasises the dramatic impact of the hillfort ramparts.

By exploring the stories of others who have walked this ancient landscape before us, we're invited to consider our own place within Maiden Castle’s ongoing history.