Maiden Castle

Among the largest and most complex Iron Age hillforts in Europe, Maiden Castle's huge multiple ramparts enclose an area equivalent to 50 football pitches, protecting several hundred residents. Excavations in the 1930s and 1980s revealed the site's 4000 year history, reaching its apogee at a time of inter-tribal rivalry in the 2nd century BC. They also produced dramatic evidence of the hillfort's final fall to Roman invaders in AD 44, including stores of sling-stones and the bones of a defender killed by a Roman ballista bolt.