About the model
One of the largest Iron Age hillforts in Europe, on a saddle-backed chalk hill 2.6 km south-west of Dorchester with two knolls. Before the fort: an Early Neolithic causewayed enclosure of two interrupted ditches on the eastern knoll (about 3800-3400 BC), then a bank barrow 546 m (1,790 ft) long and 18 m (60 ft) wide between flanking ditches, nearly ploughed out; Bronze Age round barrows. The first hillfort (about 600 BC) followed the line of the Neolithic enclosure: a single rampart and V-shaped ditch round 6.4 ha (16 acres) of the eastern knoll, with a north-west entrance and a double east entrance. About 450 BC it was extended west over Hog Hill to 19 ha (47 acres) and given more ramparts: four ramparts and three ditches on the south, three ramparts on the steeper north; inner rampart about 2 km round; complex outworks at the eastern and western double entrances; at the west end of the old fort its western rampart and gate survive as earthworks inside. Inner rampart timber-revetted early, later chalk dump with a limestone wall. Wheeler excavated in 1934-37 (the 'war cemetery' at the eastern entrance); Sharples in 1985-86. A Romano-British temple (a cella with an ambulatory, east door), a priest's house and a round shrine were built about AD 370 in the eastern half, with a stone gateway in the east entrance. A square dew-pond of the 1860s is in the middle. The earthworks come from the EA LiDAR; quotes give the original heights where they differ.