Uffington Castle

Uffington Castle

a concrete triangulation point and steepsided ramparts of close-cropped grass Ramparts of Uffington Castle at Whitehorse Hill, the highest point in Oxfordshire.
Location	Whitehorse Hill, between Swindon and Wantage. (SU299863)
Region	Oxfordshire England
Coordinates
Type	Hill fort
History
Periods	Iron Age
Site notes
Excavation dates	1995
Archaeologists	David Miles, Oxford Archaeological Unit
Condition	substantial earthworks
Public access	Yes
Website	English Heritage
Scheduled monument
Designated	1882
Reference no.	1008412

Uffington Castle is an early Iron Age (with underlying Bronze Age) univallate hill fort in Oxfordshire, England. It covers about 32,000 square metres and is surrounded by two earth banks separated by a ditch with an entrance in the western end. A second entrance in the eastern end was apparently blocked up a few centuries after it was built. The original defensive ditch was V-shaped with a small box rampart in front and a larger one behind it. Timber posts stood on the ramparts. Later the ditch was deepened and the extra material dumped on top of the ramparts to increase their size. A parapet wall of sarsen stones lined the top of the innermost rampart. It is very close to the Uffington White Horse.

Uffington White Horse, sketched by William Plenderleath in The White Horses of the West of England (1892)

Excavations

Excavations have indicated that it was probably built in the 7th or 8th century BC and continued to be occupied throughout the Iron Age. Isolated postholes were found inside the fort but no evidence of buildings. Pottery, loom weights and animal bone finds suggest some form of occupation however. The most activity appears to have been during the Roman period as the artefacts recovered from the upper fills of the ditch attest. The ramparts were remodelled to provide more entrances and a shrine seems to have been built in the early 4th century AD. Two oblong mounds, one containing 46 Romano-British burials and one containing eight Saxon burials, lie nearby.

The Ridgeway

An ancient track passes by the northern entrance to the hill fort, and is known as The Ridgeway. It links to the Icknield Way at the Goring Gap, and passes close to Avebury before heading south across Salisbury Plain. It also passes very close to a Neolithic chambered long barrow Waylands Smithy about a mile to the west.

Protection

The hillfort is a Scheduled Ancient Monument, and was included in the Ancient Monuments Protection Act 1882 as one of the first 68 sites in Britain and Ireland to receive legal protection. Along with the Uffington White Horse on the slopes below the ramparts, it is in the care of English Heritage.

• Uffington Castle - geograph.org.uk - 713182.jpg

  Uffington Castle ditch and ramparts

• Whitehorse Hill - geograph.org.uk - 292571.jpg

  Western side of Uffington Castle hill fort

• Uffington Castle - geograph.org.uk - 292746.jpg

  The ditch and bank on the southeast side

References

• Miles, D., et al., 2003, Uffington White Horse and its Landscape: Investigations at White Horse Hill, Uffington, 1989–95 and Tower Hill, Ashbury, 1993-4, Oxford Archaeology, ISBN 0-947816-77-1

External links

• Ancient Britain – Uffington Castle
• YouTube – Uffington Castle Iron age hillfort
• Research data: Wessex Hillforts Survey—extensive three-year study by English Heritage and Oxford University

See also

• Wayland's Smithy
• White Horse Hill
• Ridgeway
• Map sources for Uffington Castle