Fortified place · Iron Age
Bratton Castle
Wiltshire
Two ramparts enclosing 23 acres on a Salisbury Plain escarpment, later shadowed by a Georgian chalk horse cut into the same hillside.
- Some walking
By type
Fortified places of Britain & Ireland
Page 4 of 21.
Search and filters apply to these 100 places.
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Fortified place · Iron Age
Brean Down Fort
Somerset
A Victorian naval fortification eighteen metres above the sea, built to guard the Bristol Channel.
- Near Weston-super-Mare
- Some walking
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Fortified place · Medieval
Brecon Castle
Powys
A castle raised by Bernard de Neufmarché in 1093 and repeatedly attacked by Welsh forces.
- Near Brecon
- Easy path
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Fortified place · Iron Age
Bredon Hill
Worcestershire
An Iron Age hillfort, a pair of stones said to cure illness, and Worcestershire's largest Roman coin hoard share a summit now capped by a Georgian…
- Some walking
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Fortified place · Medieval
Bredwardine Castle
Herefordshire
A Marcher stronghold fought over through the Anarchy and dismantled by royal order, its stone walls were later folded into a Tudor-era gabled house…
- Near Bredwardine
- Easy path
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Fortified place · Iron Age
Breidden Hill
Powys
A steep-sided hill of 367 metres near Welshpool, its footpaths giving views into England and Shropshire.
- Near Welshpool
- Rough ground
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Fortified place
Brenscombe Heath
Dorset
Brenscombe Heath is a protected 34.7-hectare biological Site of Special Scientific Interest near Corfe Castle, recognised for its ecological rather…
- Near Corfe Castle
- Some walking
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Fortified place · Pictish & early medieval
Brent Ditch
Cambridgeshire
A surviving stretch of a lost linear frontier, still standing 2 to 3 metres high in woodland beside the old A11 where four sister earthworks once c…
- Near Abington
- Rough ground
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Fortified place · Iron Age
Brent Hill
Devon
Brent Hill preserves the hilltop location of an Iron Age (the centuries before Rome arrived, from about 800 BC) fort above South Brent in Devon.
- Rough ground
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Fortified place · Iron Age
Brent Knoll Camp
Somerset
A hilltop enclosure on Brent Knoll, visible above the Somerset Levels.
- Near Burnham-on-Sea
- Some walking
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Fortified place · Iron Age
Brewer's Castle
Somerset
A defended settlement on Hawkridge Ridge Wood, standing very close to a second fort of the same kind.
- Some walking
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Fortified place · Medieval
Bridgnorth Castle
Shropshire
A castle founded by Robert de Bellême in 1101 that changed hands almost as soon as it existed.
- Near Bridgnorth
- Easy path
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Fortified place · Medieval
Bridgwater Castle
Somerset
A castle that made the town rather than the other way round: and whose stone is still in the cellars of the Georgian streets built over it.
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Fortified place · Medieval
Brimpsfield Castle
Gloucestershire
A rebel baron's stronghold, deliberately reduced to a mound and ditch after his execution in 1322: one of Gloucestershire's clearest physical trace…
- Some walking
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Fortified place · Prehistoric
Brinklow Castle
Warwickshire
A burial mound raised before writing reached Britain, reshaped by the Normans into a motte: the earthen mound a castle was raised on: 12 metres hig…
- Near Brinklow
- Some walking
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Fortified place · Medieval
Bristol Castle
Bristol
A royal prison that once held a reigning king: Stephen of Blois was locked in its keep (the principal tower, built to be held even if the walls fel…
- Near Bristol
- Easy path
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Fortified place · Iron Age
British Camp
Herefordshire
Later reused as a Norman castle and then cut through by a boundary bank and ditch in 1287, this hillfort: a hilltop enclosure ringed by earth rampa…
- Rough ground
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Fortified place · Medieval
Brixham Battery
Devon
Brixham Battery is an unusually complete emergency coast-defence site, where the hurried response to Dunkirk remains legible in guns, searchlights…
- Easy path
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Fortified place · Medieval
Broadway Tower, Worcestershire
Worcestershire
Built as an ornamental beacon for a countess, the tower went on to house a private printing press, a Pre-Raphaelite retreat, and a Cold War listeni…
- Some walking
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Fortified place · Iron Age
Broch of Ayre
Orkney Islands
The Ayre site is a broch, a tall circular tower of unmortared stone found only in Scotland, on Orkney Mainland.
- Easy path
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Fortified place · Iron Age
Broch of Borwick
Orkney Islands
The Broch of Borwick is a tall circular tower of unmortared stone, a type of building found only in Scotland, whose remains illuminate changing com…
- Rough ground
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Fortified place · Iron Age
Broch of Burrian
Orkney Islands
The Broch of Burrian is a tall circular tower of unmortared stone, a type of building found only in Scotland, on the rocky shore of North Ronaldsay.
- Rough ground
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Fortified place · Iron Age
Broch of Clickimin
Shetland Islands
On a small promontory jutting into the Loch of Clickimin, three-quarters of a mile south-west of Lerwick on the road to Sumburgh, stands one of the…
- Some walking
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Fortified place · Iron Age
Broch of Cullingsburgh
Shetland Islands
Very little survives above ground of the broch (a tall circular tower of unmortared stone, found only in Scotland) that once stood on a shoulder of…
- Some walking
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Fortified place · Iron Age
Broch of Culswick
Shetland Islands
A massive triangular lintel stone still spans the entrance of the Broch (a tall circular tower of unmortared stone, found only in Scotland) of Culs…
- Some walking
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Fortified place · Iron Age
Broch of West Burrafirth
Shetland Islands
The Broch of West Burrafirth stands on a low rocky islet known as the Holm of Hebrista, within West Burra Firth on the west side of Shetland Mainla…
- Some walking
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Fortified place · Medieval
Brodick Castle
North Ayrshire
A Norse-named stronghold on the Clyde approaches, seized and re-seized by Norwegian kings, Bruce's lieutenants, Campbell raiders and Cromwell's gun…
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Fortified place · Medieval
Bronllys Castle
Powys
A fortress towards Talgarth, first raised in timber by Richard Fitz Pons in or soon after 1100.
- Near Bronllys
- Some walking
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Fortified place · Medieval
Bronsil Castle
Herefordshire
A moated manor house whose owner won royal licence twice to fortify it, only for Civil War flames and a 1991 scaffolding collapse to leave it a bro…
- Near Eastnor
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Fortified place · Medieval
Bronwydd Castle
Ceredigion
A Victorian fantasy of a castle, built to look centuries older than it was, now a shell that has collapsed within living memory.
- Near Llangynllo (Llangunllo)
- Rough ground
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Fortified place · Iron Age
Broomfield Camp
Somerset
A trench cut through the bank in 1968 produced pottery of the Iron Age, roughly 800 BC until the Roman conquest: which is more than most of its nei…
- Near Broomfield
- Some walking
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Fortified place · Medieval
Brough Castle
Cumbria
A Norman keep raised inside a Roman fort, burned twice by its own owners and rebuilt each time: its ruin traces four centuries of one family's grip…
- Near Brough
- Some walking
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Fortified place · Medieval
Brougham Castle
Cumbria
A single stronghold layered over Roman, medieval and Romantic history, whose ruined keep (the principal tower, built to be held even if the walls f…
- Near Penrith
- Some walking
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Fortified place · Iron Age
Brown Clee Hill
Shropshire
The highest hill in Shropshire, thought to have taken more wartime aircraft than any other in Britain: and now carrying the radar that keeps them a…
- Some walking
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Fortified place · Medieval
Brownsea Castle
Dorset
Brownsea Castle began as Henry VIII’s artillery fort guarding Poole Harbour and evolved through centuries of residential rebuilding into a National…
- Near Poole
- Easy path
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Fortified place · Iron Age
Broxmouth
East Lothian
The most completely excavated hillfort (a defended enclosure on high ground, ringed with banks and ditches) in Scotland, its cemetery preserves rar…
- Some walking
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Fortified place · Medieval
Bryn Amlwg Castle
Shropshire
A twelfth- or thirteenth-century castle site beside the England–Wales border, with earthworks still visible.
- Rough ground
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Fortified place · Medieval
Bryn Bras Castle
Gwynedd
Bryn Bras Castle is a Grade II* neo-Romanesque (the round-arched style that came before Gothic) country house whose theatrical 1830s architecture,…
- Near Llanrug
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Fortified place · Iron Age
Bryn Euryn
Conwy
A limestone-walled hillfort: a defended enclosure on high ground, ringed with banks and ditches: above the Conwy coast, later reused as a wartime o…
- Near Rhos-on-Sea
- Some walking
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Fortified place · Medieval
Buckenham Castle
Norfolk
Buckenham Castle preserves an unusually early circular keep, a planned village created to serve it, and a long record of aristocratic inheritance e…
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Fortified place · Iron Age
Buckland Rings
Hampshire
A triple-banked Iron Age (roughly 800 BC until the Roman conquest) enclosure standing just 27 metres above sea level, and rarer for it: this style…
- Easy path
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Fortified place · Medieval
Buckton Castle
Greater Manchester
Buckton Castle is one of north-west England’s earliest stone castles, a short-lived 12th-century hilltop enclosure whose buried walls and gatehouse…
- Near Carrbrook
- Rough ground
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Fortified place · Medieval
Buddugre Castle
powys
A castle put on a ridge top where a Norman would have chosen the valley: one reason it is credited to a Welsh king rather than a marcher lord.
- Near Llanddewi Ystradenny
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Fortified place · Medieval
Builth Castle
Powys
Edward I's first castle in Wales, built in 1277 and since dismantled to its mound and earthworks.
- Near Builth Wells
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Fortified place · Medieval
Buittle Castle
Dumfries and Galloway
Buittle combines a major Galloway motte-and-bailey castle complex, with an earth mound and an enclosed yard, with evidence of occupation from the M…
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Fortified place · Medieval
Bungay Castle
Suffolk
A castle at a bend in the River Waveney, built by Roger Bigod around 1100.
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Fortified place · Medieval
Bunratty Castle
County Clare
Bunratty Castle is a major fifteenth-century Irish tower house whose successive fortifications reveal Norman, Gaelic, Confederate and modern herita…
- Near Bunratty
- Easy path
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Fortified place · Prehistoric
Burfa Castle
Powys
Five hundred and seventy-nine metres by 187, with three or four banks and ditches and a torturous approach at the entrance: and forestry has taken…
- Near Old Radnor
- Rough ground
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Fortified place · Medieval
Burgate Wood
Suffolk
A medieval circular bank-and-ditch castle enclosure, inside a thirty-hectare biological site of special scientific interest.
- Near Burgate
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Fortified place · Medieval
Burleigh Castle
Perth and Kinross
A fifteenth- and sixteenth-century castle just outside Milnathort, north of Kinross.
- Near Kinross
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Fortified place · Iron Age
Burley Wood
Devon
A Devon hilltop with both an Iron Age hillfort, a hilltop enclosure ringed by earth ramparts from about 800 BC, and a later Norman motte-and-bailey…
- Rough ground
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Fortified place · Medieval
Burnchurch Castle
County Kilkenny
Burnchurch Castle is an unusually complex Irish tower house, where a six-storey core, round gate turret and dense network of mural rooms preserve a…
- Near Callan
- Some walking
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Fortified place · Medieval
Burncourt Castle
County Tipperary
A fortified house so lavish it needed twenty-six gables and seven chimneys: burned by its own mistress in 1649 rather than surrendered to Cromwell'…
- Near Cahir
- Some walking
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Fortified place · Medieval
Burneside Hall
Cumbria
One of a pair of fortified pele towers now half-lost, its survivor tree-ring dated to show a Tudor-era rebuild hidden inside a medieval shell: and…
- Near Kendal
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Fortified place · Roman
Burnfield
Aberdeenshire
A Roman camp so faint on the ground that only a photograph taken from the air, in 1982, proved it had ever existed at all.
- Near Milltown of Rothiemay
- Easy path
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Fortified place · Iron Age
Burnham Beeches
Buckinghamshire
A rare single-rampart hillfort: an Iron Age settlement defended by banks and ditches on high ground: of the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age surv…
- Near Burnham
- Some walking
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Fortified place · Iron Age
Burra Ness Broch
Shetland Islands
On the tip of the headland of Burra Ness, on the east coast of Yell in Shetland, the drystone wall of a round tower still rises over four metres on…
- Some walking
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Fortified place · Iron Age
Burrington Camp
Somerset
The camp looks down into Burrington Combe, where cave cemeteries record human presence far older than the fort.
- Some walking
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Fortified place · Iron Age
Burrough Hill
Leicestershire
A magnetometry survey found over 400 storage pits and roundhouse foundations packed inside a single set of ramparts: evidence that this was a worki…
- Some walking
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Fortified place · Iron Age
Burroughston Broch
Orkney Islands
One of Orkney’s best-preserved brochs, its intact guard chamber, wall gallery and internal well make the defensive engineering of a tower from abou…
- Some walking
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Fortified place · Iron Age
Burry Holms
Swansea
English records of the 1440s call it 'Saint Kenyth atte Holmes': the Welsh saint's name and the Norse word for an islet, side by side.
- Near Rhossili
- Rough ground
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Fortified place · Medieval
Burt Castle
County Donegal
A sixteenth-century O'Doherty stronghold built to a Scottish Z-plan design, it became the launchpad and then the last redoubt of a rebellion that c…
- Near Burt
- Some walking
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Fortified place · Iron Age
Burton Fleming (archaeological site)
East Riding of Yorkshire
Two square-barrow cemeteries here held 64 Iron Age burials, each body folded into a crouched position facing north-south, a burial rite that marks…
- Some walking
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Fortified place · Medieval
Burton in Lonsdale Castle
North Yorkshire
A royal garrison list from the 1130s survives for this small Yorkshire stronghold, naming the very soldiers who held it - a level of detail few min…
- Some walking
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Fortified place · Iron Age
Burton Point, Cheshire
Cheshire
A single earthwork sealed a headland the River Dee once defended on three sides: until 18th-century engineering rerouted the river and left the for…
- Near Burton, Cheshire
- Some walking
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Fortified place · Medieval
Burwell Castle
Cambridgeshire
A siege ended not by a breached wall but by a stray crossbow bolt: the earthworks left behind are the abandoned first draft of a Norman stronghold…
- Near Burwell
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Fortified place · Iron Age
Bury Bank
Staffordshire
A seventh-century king of Mercia is said to have lived here, at a place called Wulfherecester - and no evidence has been found that the fort was re…
- Easy path
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Fortified place · Iron Age
Bury Camp
Wiltshire
A multivallate Iron Age: roughly 800 BC until the Roman conquest: hillfort, a settlement defended by banks and ditches on high ground, of some 9.2…
- Some walking
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Fortified place · Prehistoric
Bury Castle, Brompton Regis
Somerset
An Iron Age fort above the meeting of two rivers, reused a thousand years later as a castle in the civil war between Stephen and Matilda.
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Fortified place · Medieval
Bury Castle, Greater Manchester
Greater Manchester
Bury Castle preserves the foundations of a late-medieval moated manor whose destruction after Bosworth shows the direct consequences of the Wars of…
- Near Bury
- Easy path
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Fortified place · Prehistoric
Bury Castle, Selworthy
somerset
A defended enclosure of a fifth of a hectare on a spur above Selworthy, with a second bank thrown out thirty metres west, where the ground offers n…
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Fortified place · Iron Age
Bury Ditches
Shropshire
One of the most complete hillforts in the Shropshire Hills: visible only because two decades of storms took the forestry off it.
- Some walking
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Fortified place · Iron Age
Bury Hill
Hampshire
A double ring of earthen ramparts raised in two distinct building phases, then reused centuries later as a royal war-camp during the fight for the…
- Near Andover
- Some walking
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Fortified place · Medieval
Bury Manor
Gloucestershire
Its castellated walls are barely two centuries old, but the cellars beneath them are a genuine survival from a 13th-century manor house on the same…
- Easy path
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Fortified place · Medieval
Bury Mount
Northamptonshire
A Norman motte-and-bailey, a timber tower on an earth mound with a walled yard beside it, raised during the Anarchy on ground already defended agai…
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Fortified place · Iron Age
Bury Walls
Shropshire
A protected defended site on a sandstone ridge south-east of Weston-under-Redcastle.
- Rough ground
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Fortified place · Iron Age
Bussock Camp
Berkshire
Its ramparts are lopsidedly built: doubled banks and ditches guard the south and east, while a single bank was thought sufficient for the gentler n…
- Near Chieveley
- Some walking
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Fortified place · Iron Age
Bwrdd Arthur
Isle of Anglesey
Bwrdd Arthur is an Anglesey hillfort: a settlement defended by banks and ditches on high ground during the Iron Age, the centuries before Rome arri…
- Near Llanddona
- Rough ground
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Fortified place · Medieval
Bytham Castle
Lincolnshire
Bytham Castle preserves the earthwork (a bank, ditch or mound shaped from soil rather than built in stone) footprint of a probable early Norman hil…
- Near Castle Bytham
- Some walking
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Fortified place · Medieval
Bywell Castle
Northumberland
Bywell Castle preserves the imposing gatehouse of an unfinished Neville project, overlooking the Tyne and retaining a direct link to the Wars of th…
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Fortified place · Iron Age
Cadbury Camp
Somerset
An Iron Age fort with Roman coins, a statue of Mars and a wartime searchlight battery: and a Camelot legend that probably belongs to a different Ca…
- Some walking
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Fortified place · Iron Age
Cadbury Castle, Devon
Devon
Cadbury Castle is a strategically placed hillfort, a defended enclosure on high ground, ringed with banks and ditches, whose exceptional views link…
- Some walking
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Fortified place · Iron Age
Cadbury Castle, Somerset
Somerset
A defended hilltop at South Cadbury, ringed by banks and ditches on high ground.
- Some walking
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Fortified place · Iron Age
Cadbury Hill
Somerset
An Iron Age fort - roughly 800 BC until the Roman conquest - refortified around AD 400 after Rome withdrew, and trading with Byzantium a century la…
- Some walking
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More places
Briefer entries: recorded and worth knowing, with fuller pages to come.
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Fortified place · Iron Age
Bremridge Wood
Devon
Bremridge Wood preserves an Iron Age (from about 800 BC until the Romans came) enclosure above the River Bray on land linked with a Domesday estate.
- Some walking
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Fortified place · Medieval
Bright Castle
Down
A heavily ruined late-medieval County Down tower house whose surviving east wall still records its vaulted floors, windows and parapet walk.
- Near Newcastle
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Fortified place · Medieval
Brightwell Castle
Oxfordshire
A castle between Didcot and Wallingford, in Berkshire until the boundary changes of 1974.
- Near Brightwell-cum-Sotwell
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Fortified place · Medieval
Bromwich Castle
West Midlands
A motte castle: the earthen mound a castle was raised on: rebuilt in stone in 1168, excavated ahead of the M6, and now under a roundabout interchange.
- Near Castle Bromwich
- Easy path
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Fortified place · Iron Age
Buarth-y-Gaer
Neath Port Talbot
On Mynydd-y-Gaer above the Neath estuary, this roughly circular 130-metre bank and ditch preserves a large defended enclosure whose date and purpos…
- Some walking
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Fortified place · Medieval
Buckingham Castle
Buckinghamshire
A vanished stronghold whose stone footings still hold up the churchyard green and the back gardens of Castle Street, long after the castle itself d…
- Near Buckingham
- Easy path
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Fortified place · Iron Age
Bullsdown Camp
Hampshire
Three concentric banks and ditches survive under dense woodland: a defended plateau settlement whose scale still reads clearly despite centuries of…
- Near Basingstoke
- Rough ground
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Fortified place · Medieval
Burgh by Sands Castle
Cumbria
For nearly two centuries this was the administrative seat of an entire barony, yet a Scottish raid erased it so completely that not one stone shows…
- Near Carlisle
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Fortified place · Iron Age
Burgh Walls Camp
Somerset
An Iron Age defended settlement in Leigh Woods above the Avon, one of three such forts nearby.
- Near Long Ashton
- Some walking
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Fortified place · Iron Age
Burledge Hill
somerset
Iron slag from the 1955 dig shows metal was being worked inside the fort: and the shift to iron is the change most archaeologists think produced fo…
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Fortified place · Medieval
Burley Castle
Rutland
A site north of Burley used first as a Saxon meeting place, more commonly called Alstoe.
- Some walking
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Fortified place · Roman
Burnswark Hill
Dumfries and Galloway
A swathe of hundreds of lead sling bullets lies scattered along the south-eastern flank of Burnswark Hill, marking the line where Roman slingers on…
- Some walking
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Fortified place · Iron Age
Burridge Fort
Devon
An Iron Age hillfort, a defended hilltop settlement, north-east of Barnstaple, whose high position above two rivers shows the strategic use of Devo…
- Some walking
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Fortified place · Medieval
Buttercrambe Castle
North Yorkshire
A royal licence of 1200 ties this lost stronghold directly to King John, though little more than fragmentary earthworks now mark where it stood.
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Fortified place · Medieval
Cabra Castle
County Cavan
A nineteenth-century Cavan country house that took the name of an older ruined castle, moving from Ascendancy seat to restored hotel.
- Near Kingscourt
- Easy path
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Fortified place · Roman
Cadder
East Dunbartonshire
Cadder’s quarried-away fort survives through excavated headquarters, granaries and baths, preserving the evidence of a substantial Antonine Wall ga…
- Near Bishopbriggs
- Easy path
No places match those filters.