It is probably impossible to exaggerate the sovereign status of Maiden Castle among the 80 known defended prehistoric hillforts in Dorset alone, or to play down its importance in the heyday of this type of site throughout England as a whole. Yet this fortified hill is of no great elevation, being plainly visible from the air as an extensive kidney-shaped enclosure girded about by three great tiered embankments or ramparts with interstitial ditches. From ground level however, this amazing site, barely two miles south west of Dorchester town centre, may appear only as a great linear embankment or ridge.
To re-trace Maiden Castle’s evolution from its earliest antiquity we have to regress some six thousand years to the time of the first farmer’s arrival in England. At that time the Maiden hill would probably have appeared as a plain insignificant low elevation on the tract of lowland between the river Frome to the north and the coastal ridge to the south. It is further likely that the site and its immediate environment was well wooded in those days, or until the agricultural immigrants arrived.
These immigrants were settlers of the New Stone Age (Neolithic) from continental Europe. Finding the hill a favourable location for establishing a communal base, the hill and the surrounding land were clear-felled and the eastern end (knoll) was enclosed by a discontinuous bank and double line of ditches, creating the feature known to archaeologists as a causewayed enclosure. This had an area of about 20 acres, but very little activity took place within it at first. Later the enclosure seems to have served a charnel function for the ritual disposal of the dead, as the deposition of a considerable amount of human and animal bone with some pottery took place in the ditches and pits.
There is then evidence that the site went out of use in the later Neolithic. Following this the bank was razed and partly overlain by the construction of a type of monument unknown from anywhere else outside Dorset. This was an extremely elongated mound known as a bank barrow, which in the Maiden Castle example is 545 metres (1790 feet) long and was found to contain a mutilated burial at one end. This suggests that the bank barrow may have originally been a long barrow, which for some possibly ritualistic reason was greatly extended.
For until the early first millennium BC it appears that Maiden Castle seems to have been a place serving an almost exclusively ritual or funerary function. There is no evidence for any continuation or extension of habitation within the enclosure from the late Neolithic and into the Bronze Age. The only feature to be added during this period being a round barrow, which could well be contemporary with the barrow to be seen in the ploughed field to the north-west.
It has therefore been supposed that towards the end of the Neolithic around 2000 BC the focus of settlement shifted towards Poundbury Camp, the other major prehistoric site near Dorchester, or else into the Frome valley. Certainly during the Bronze Age the land around Maiden Castle was divided up for agriculture by means of lynchets and field systems. This has been taken to indicate increasing pressure on the land from population growth, though there is no evidence that the hilltop itself was ever brought into cultivation.
By the Mid Bronze Age some land became exhausted from over cultivation. A Revival of Maiden Castle as a focus of occupation then appears to take place around the same time, for a bank was constructed from north to south down the middle of the hill, segregating the Neolithic enclosure from the western half. There is some indication that the latter was then used for ranching or grazing sheep. High-caste burials evidently continued locally, as the dividing bank is associated with the appearance of more round barrows.
One of the popular misconceptions about hillforts is that they were wholly an innovation of the Iron Age peoples, and so had no precursors in the earlier period. But it is now recognised that many of these fortified hills had their origin in the Bronze Age, although they were unlikely to have been fully revetted at this time.
The arrival of the Iron Age in Britain is usually taken at around 700 BC, when a new wave of settlers from the continent arrived in southern England. At Maiden Castle possible pressure of population forced the new immigrants to bring the hilltop into use as a place to live and not just for stock-keeping or religious functions. A single rampart was constructed at the east end, using the line of the much earlier Neolithic enclosure bank almost entirely, with a ditch and double portal entrance retained throughout later modifications. This enclosed about 16 acres, but was later enlarged to 47 acres to take in
the west knoll. With this enlargement the original defences were strengthened and double entrances protected by outworks constructed at each end. At the east entrance two defended corridors were also designated.
Many hut dwellings were constructed, but from around 200 BC some abandonment of the site for smaller settlements outside seems to have taken place, for some of the defences were eroded and some huts collapsed. Then in about 150 BC the main rampart was doubled, additional lines of defence were built, and the outworks around the east entrance were greatly increased in complexity. Though curiously, the ramparts on the south side were never finished properly. Here they are of the type called ‘glacis’ i.e. the counter scarp of the bank sloped straight down into the ditch. But by the Mid Iron Age settlement within the enclosure was well organised, with areas for living, religion and animal husbandry.
Between 100 and 75 BC the site underwent another major reconstruction. The inner rampart was modified and the outer ones strengthened. (Initially these ramparts were of the box type, i.e. they were revetted by timber on both sides.) The inner gates were left unaltered, but both entrances were completely re-modelled with greater depth and complexity. This persistent reinforcing of the ramparts has been interpreted as an expression of civic pride or as a defence against rival tribes beyond the hill or, ultimately, the Romans.
But the arrival of the Romans in the area was a whole century in the future when Maiden Castle was at its peak, though anticipation of a Roman invasion could have been rife by the early 1st century. Nevertheless the threat seems to have prompted last minute fortifications at the entranceways in readiness, but to no avail. The threat became a brutal reality in 45 AD when a cohort of the 2nd Legion under the command of Vespasian (a future emperor) laid siege to the hillfort at the east entrance. Despite the complexity of the interlocking outworks, the Roman’s superior arsenal and tactics easily surmounted the obstacles.
Those survivors from among the many slain in the ensuing conflict are thought to have abandoned the site for settlements below, as their way of life in primitive timber hovels would have been out of keeping with the Roman way. After the conquest of the hill a square, roofed shrine with accompanying priest house was built in the north-central part of the enclosure.
With this temple the retraceable history of Maiden Castle is concluded and then lost for another 19 centuries. In the 1930 the eminent archaeologist Sir Mortimer Wheeler undertook his famous excavation of the east entrance area and revealed to the world the grizzly fate of the hillfort’s defenders. He excavated a cemetery of the fallen, many showing broken bones and in one instance the skeleton of a man with the Roman ballista-bolt which killed him still embedded in his spine! The finding of mounds of ammunition showed that the defenders had collected pebbles from Chesil Bank to use as sling stones.
Interestingly, it has been said that Wheeler, in concentrating on the late Iron Age and Roman phases of the hill’s history, disturbed the causewayed enclosure without having any idea of what it was or that it was there – in other words he discovered it by accident.
More recently in 1985 and 1986 new excavations were undertaken with the aim of extending Wheeler’s trenches to extract new data. But in conclusion it can be said that much about the earlier part of the Maiden Castle story is based on flimsy evidence, and is therefore not above re-appraisal should more information be forthcoming in the future.