Yarnbury Castle
Yarnbury Castle is a multi-phase, multi-walled, oval hill settlement of the Iron Age north of Steeple Langford in Wiltshire in England .
Hillfort , which was examined in 1991, covers an area of 11.5 hectares. Finds from the Iron Age, Roman coins, Roman-British ceramics from the early Iron Age to the Roman-British period, including Samian goods from around AD 160 and remains of burials discovered. There is evidence of a longer and extensive use of the space. Among other things, around 130 structures of various sizes were found. Most are a mixture of round houses and pits. The excavations at Yarnbury Castle are of biological interest as well.
Yarnbury Castle consists of three ramparts with outer moats. The walls are up to 3.5 m high and the trenches up to 1.7 m deep. The total width of the wall is usually around 17.0 m. The earthworks are usually well preserved, except on the northeast side, where the outermost trench was lost due to interference. In the middle of the wall is an older, smaller enclosure of 5.2 hectares with an access on the western side.
The most important earthworks are around 100 BC. Dated to about 300 BC, the earlier internal structure. The main entrance to the ramparts is on the eastern side. There is an entrance at the north end, which like the entrance on the west side and a small, rectangular, Roman-British enclosure on the side of the fortress may be a later addition.
literature
- James Dyer: Hillforts of England and Wales 1999. ISBN 0747801800
- James Ford-Johnston: Hillforts of the Iron Age in England and Wales: A Survey of the Surface Evidence . Liverpool: Liverpool University Press 1976.
Web links
Coordinates: 51 ° 9 ′ 45.5 ″ N , 1 ° 57 ′ 2.5 ″ W.