Maiden Castle

[puddleshark]

Early, before the mist cleared, a circuit of the ramparts of Maiden Castle Iron Age hillfort.




Entrance to the hillfort, a winding route through the defences.




Circling the inner ramparts, steep ditches to either side. Crows cawing. But it's not spooky. Maiden Castle never seems to me to have much of a genius loci - it just feels vast, too empty. (Unlike two of the Dorset hillforts - - Eggardon Hill and Coney's Castle - both of which have a slightly uncanny, unfriendly reputation.)

And whereas the hillfort at Badbury Rings is managed for biodiversity, and the ramparts are covered in wild flowers during spring and summer, Maiden Castle is intensively grazed by sheep, so there's nothing but grass on the ramparts. (But hopefully this will change. I read in the paper that English Heritage has teamed up with Plantlife to create 100 new wild flower meadows...)







It's hard to get much of a sense of the hillfort from the ground, even when the fog clears. Aerial pictures make the structure clear:



"Maiden Castle is one of the largest and most complex Iron Age hillforts in Britain. Its vast multiple ramparts enclose an area the size of 50 football pitches, and the site was home to several hundred people in the Iron Age (800 BC–AD 43). Excavations in the 1930s and 1980s have shed much light on the development of the hilltop, from its origins as a Neolithic enclosure over 6,000 years ago, through many centuries of modification during the Iron Age, to the building of a Romano-British temple." www.english-heritage.org.uk


The mist starting to lift. Skylarks singing from somewhere up in the pale blue sky.










You know you have almost completed the circuit when the Italianate towers of Poundbury - Prince King Charles' model city - appear on the skyline, like an hallucination caused by lack of tea. But it's half past eight on Easter Sunday. Nowhere's open. There's no tea to be had. Poundbury just won't go away.

Comments

[heleninwales]

Those black and white photos in the mist are wonderfully atmospheric. Then the change to colour as the sun rose works well too. Shame about the lack of tea though.

[puddleshark]

I wasn't actually planning to go to Maiden Castle yesterday, but as I was driving past Dorchester I saw the mist on the hills, and I realised it was the perfect day to go walking on a hillfort.

Lack of tea is normal. I always head out very early on Bank Holiday weekends to avoid the traffic. But this usually means I finish my walk before tea rooms and cafés open.

[bleodswean]

Amazing!!! So no "feeling" for long gone folk there? That spiderweb shot - stellar!

[puddleshark]

Thanks!

Most of the Dorset hillforts have some "feeling", a very strong sense of place. But I think Maiden Castle has been so intensively grazed by sheep, for so many centuries, that nothing of that sense remains.

[asakiyume]

Wow, I'd seen some of your other Maiden Castle shots on Flickr, but the cover shot for this post! Wow! Wonderful.

[puddleshark]

Thanks!

Walking a circuit of the ramparts always has a ritual feel. But more so in the fog. There's such a sense of dislocation from the world.

[asakiyume]

Yes: and that sense--I always think, maybe it's *true*. Maybe you *are* elsewhere for a while.

[cmcmck]

The nearest big fort to us is Oswestry although we do have a smaller one out of the Weald Moors to the north of our town.

Great pics- I love the web

[puddleshark]

Thanks!

We have a lot of hillforts here in Dorset, though not quite as many as Devon. But Maiden Castle really is on an entirely different scale.