Castle Rings, Wiltshire
| Castle Rings | |
|---|---|
Ditch and rampart of Castle Rings
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 Location within Wiltshire
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| General information | |
| Architectural style | Iron Age hill fort |
| Town or city | Donhead St Mary |
| Country | England |
| Coordinates | 51°01′30″N 2°09′38″W / 51.025046°N 2.160424°W |
| Technical details | |
| Size | 12.8 acres (5.2 ha) |
Coordinates: 51°01′30″N 2°09′38″W / 51.025046°N 2.160424°W
Castle Rings is a univallate hill fort in the parish of Donhead St Mary in Wiltshire in England. The fort is a Scheduled Ancient Monument, with a list entry identification number of 1005698. Castle Rings has been dated to the Iron Age and is situated at an altitude of 228 metres (748 ft) upon Upper Greensand sandstone beds. The main bulk of the fort enclosure lies within the boundaries of Donhead St Mary parish but some of the outlying earthworks are situated in the neighbouring Sedgehill and Semley parish. In the mid-1980s a metal detectorist unearthed a hoard of stater coins of the Durotriges tribe within the hill fort.
Lady Theodora Grosvenor described the fort in her 1867 book Motcombe, Past and Present:
...a fine encampment, enclosing a space of about 12 acres, and considered to have been originally British, which exists within the angle where the roads from Semley Church and Donhead to Shaftesbury unite by Wincombe Lodge. It bears the name of Castle Rings, and its embankments and ditches are strongly defined, though, from being overgrown with copse-wood, seldom observed.
The rampart of the fort stands 2.8 metres (9.2 ft) high with a 0.4-metre (1.3 ft) deep ditch; the ditch is set between double earth banks. The ditch averages 16 metres (52 ft) wide and varies in depth to a maximum of 4.4 metres (14 ft). The inner rampart has an average width of 8 metres (26 ft) and stands 1.9 metres (6.2 ft) above the internal surface level of the fort.
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