England Guide
Hampshire, Dorset and Wiltshire
Maiden Castle
Price: Free
Address: 2 miles southwest of Dorchester
One of southern England's finest prehistoric sites, MAIDEN CASTLE stands on a hill just outside Dorchester. Covering about 115 acres, it was first developed around 3000 BC by a Stone Age farming community and then used during the Bronze Age as a funeral mound. Iron Age dwellers expanded it into a populous settlement and fortified it with a daunting series of ramparts and ditches, just in time for the arrival of Vespasian's Second Legion. The ancient Britons' slingstones were no match for the more sophisticated weapons of the Roman invaders, however, and Maiden Castle was stormed in a bloody massacre in 43 AD.
What you see today is a massive series of grassy concentric ridges about sixty feet high, creasing the surface of the hill. The main finds from the site are displayed in the Dorset County Museum in Dorchester.