Castle Rings, Wiltshire
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Castle Rings | |
|---|---|
 Ditch and rampart of Castle Rings | |
  Location within Wiltshire | |
| General information | |
| Architectural style | Iron Age hill fort |
| Location | Donhead St Mary, England |
| Coordinates | 51°01′30″N 2°09′38″W / 51.025046°N 2.160424°W |
| Technical details | |
| Size | 12.8 acres (5.2 ha) |
Castle Rings is a univallate hill fort in the parish of Donhead St Mary in Wiltshire, England.[1] The site is a Scheduled Ancient Monument.[2] Castle Rings has been dated to the Iron Age and is at an altitude of 228 metres (748 ft) upon Upper Greensand sandstone beds.[1] The bulk of the fort enclosure lies within the boundaries of Donhead St Mary parish but some of the outlying earthworks are in the neighbouring Sedgehill and Semley parish.[3] In the mid-1980s a metal detectorist unearthed a hoard of stater coins of the Durotriges tribe within the hill fort.[4]
Lady Theodora Grosvenor described the fort in her 1867 book Motcombe, Past and Present:
...a fine encampment, enclosing a space of about 12 acres, and considered to have been originally British, which exists within the angle where the roads from Semley Church and Donhead to Shaftesbury unite by Wincombe Lodge. It bears the name of Castle Rings, and its embankments and ditches are strongly defined, though, from being overgrown with copse-wood, seldom observed.
— Lady Theodora Grosvenor, Motcombe, Past and Present 1867, pp. 78-79
Western outlier
The rampart of the fort stands 2.8 metres (9.2 ft) high with a 0.4-metre (1.3 ft) deep ditch;[1] the ditch is set between double earth banks. The ditch averages 16 metres (52 ft) wide and varies in depth to a maximum of 4.4 metres (14 ft). The inner rampart has an average width of 8 metres (26 ft) and stands 1.9 metres (6.2 ft) above the internal surface level of the fort.[5]
The fort measures 320 by 200 metres (1,050 by 660 ft) (NS by EW), enclosing an area of 5.2 hectares (12.8 acres).[1] There is a counter-scarp bank that averages 5 metres (16 ft) wide and varies in height from 3.1 metres (10 ft) at the southwest to between 0.8 and 1.5 metres (2.6 and 4.9 ft) at the northeast; at the southwest this bank is high enough to give the impression of a bivallate fort. There are four gaps in the ramparts, one in each of the cardinal directions, but it is not known if these were original entrances to the fort. The east and west gaps are suspected of being the original entrances while the narrower gaps on the north and south sides are thought to be modern field entrances.[5] The roughly oval rampart of the fort is overgrown with trees and bushes.[5] The interior of Castle Rings is flat and used for pasture; there is no visible evidence of Iron Age occupation.[5]
An outlying earthwork lies approximately 150 metres (490 ft) to the west of the main rampart; it crosses the ridge in a north–south direction, ending at natural scarp slopes in both directions. It extends in a curve for 340 metres (1,120 ft), running almost parallel to the rampart of the fort.[5]
The outlier extends across fields but is more clearly marked towards the north end within Crates Wood where it reaches a maximum height of 2.8 metres (9.2 ft), with a 0.4-metre (1.3 ft) deep ditch on its west side. The bank is up to 6 metres (20 ft) wide and the ditch measures 3 to 5 metres (9.8 to 16.4 ft) wide. On its east side the earthwork's scarp stands 1.8 metres (5.9 ft) high and forms a field boundary. At the south end where it crosses fields the bank is much reduced by ploughing, with a maximum height of 0.6 metres (2.0 ft) and traces of a ploughed-out ditch.[5]
