Settlement · Prehistoric
Broch of Gurness
Orkney Islands
The Broch of Gurness is a stone tower and settlement on the north-east coast of Mainland Orkney, overlooking Eynhallow Sound.
- Near Evie
- 141 metres from car park
- Some walking
By type
Settlements of Britain & Ireland
The places people lived: Neolithic villages, broch townships and the layered homes of centuries.
Page 1 of 1. Browsing 56 of 4619 — searching looks across all of them.
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Settlement · Pictish & early medieval
Brough of Birsay
Orkney Islands
A tidal island where Pictish metalworkers: people of northern and eastern Scotland from about AD 300 to 900: Norse rulers and medieval pilgrims suc…
- Near Birsay
- 625 metres from car park
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Settlement · Prehistoric
Jarlshof
Shetland Islands
Jarlshof preserves an unusually complete sequence of human occupation, with remains dating from about 2500 BC to the seventeenth century AD.
- Near Sumburgh
- 3 min walk from car park
- Some walking
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Settlement · Prehistoric
Skara Brae
Orkney Islands
Ten roofless stone houses survive at Skara Brae with their built-in furniture still in place: hearths, dressers and box-beds. Occupied for roughly…
- Near Stromness
- 5 min walk from car park
- Some walking
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Settlement · Prehistoric
Traprain Law
East Lothian
The hill was already a place of burial by around 1500 BC and shows evidence of occupation and ramparts after 1000 BC; the ramparts were rebuilt and…
- Near East Linton
- 25 min walk from car park
- Some walking
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Settlement · Medieval
Alkmonton medieval settlement
Derbyshire
A leper hospital and a baron's chapel once stood here; both vanished, leaving only grassy platforms, sunken lanes and a recovered font as trace of…
- Near Bakewell
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Fortified place · Roman
Badbury Rings
Dorset
Badbury Rings preserves early burial mounds, a large defended settlement, Roman activity and later reuse on a chalk ridge above the Stour valley.
- Near Shapwick
- Some walking
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Settlement · Prehistoric
Balbridie
Aberdeenshire
The largest Neolithic (the late Stone Age, roughly 4000–2500 BC in Britain) long house ever excavated in Britain, its scale rivalling only a handfu…
- Near Banchory
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Settlement · Prehistoric
Barnhouse Settlement
Orkney Islands
A settlement of the first farming age on the shore of the Loch of Harray, close to the Standing Stones of Stenness.
- Easy path
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Settlement · Medieval
Breachacha crannog
Argyll and Bute
A drained loch bed south of Breachacha Castle on Coll still holds an artificial island whose stonework and mysterious dug pits have never been full…
- Near Arinagour
- Rough ground
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Fortified place · Iron Age
Castallack Round
Cornwall
Castallack Round preserves the rampart (a defensive bank of earth or stone) of a Cornish enclosed settlement and the remains of a later courtyard h…
- Near Lamorna
- Some walking
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Settlement · Medieval
Coates medieval settlement
Lincolnshire
Its parish church holds Lincolnshire's only surviving 15th-century rood screen, a rare survival in a village otherwise reduced to earthworks, two f…
- Near Coates
- Some walking
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Settlement · Medieval
Cold Hanworth medieval settlement
Lincolnshire
A whole vanished village survives in the ground here: house plots, a curving street and open-field furrows still traceable beside the church that a…
- Near Cold Hanworth
- Some walking
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Fortified place · Iron Age
Danebury
Hampshire
Twenty seasons of excavation under Barry Cunliffe turned this single Hampshire hillfort, an Iron Age: the centuries before Rome arrived: settlement…
- Some walking
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Settlement · Prehistoric
Din Lligwy
Isle of Anglesey
Roman-period pottery mended with iron clamps and evidence of on-site ironworking sit inside walls that still stand almost to their original height…
- Near Moelfre
- Some walking
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Fortified place · Iron Age
Dinedor Camp
Herefordshire
Since 2016 the hillfort: a hilltop enclosure ringed by earth ramparts: has belonged to the community whose village gave it its name, and a 1951 tre…
- Near Dinedor
- Some walking
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Settlement · Medieval
Down Barns Moated Site
Greater London
Excavated twice in the twentieth century, the finds from the site still contradict themselves: pottery once read as Saxon is now judged prehistoric…
- Near Northolt
- Some walking
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Settlement · Medieval
Great Manson Farm, Monmouth
Monmouthshire
Great Manson Farm is an active sheep farm whose three listed buildings preserve a late-medieval hall adapted as a barn, an eighteenth-century farmh…
- Near Monmouth
- Easy path
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Settlement · Prehistoric
Grimspound
Devon
Grimspound is a scheduled late Bronze Age (roughly 2500–800 BC, when metal tools first spread) Dartmoor settlement whose hut circles, enclosing wal…
- Rough ground
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Sacred place · Prehistoric
Heart of Neolithic Orkney
Orkney Islands
The Orkney World Heritage group is made up of monuments from the closing Stone Age, roughly 4000–2500 BC, whose remains illuminate the islands’ cha…
- Some walking
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Fortified place · Iron Age
Hollingbury Castle
East Sussex
Hollingbury preserves a substantial defended settlement dating from from around 800 BC up to the Roman conquest on Brighton’s edge, where later exc…
- Near Brighton
- Some walking
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Settlement · Prehistoric
Holyhead Mountain Hut Circles
Isle of Anglesey
Holyhead Mountain Hut Circles are one of Wales’s best-preserved prehistoric (predating the written record in Britain) settlement groups, with recon…
- Near Holyhead
- Some walking
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Settlement · Medieval
Ingarsby
Leicestershire
One of England's best-preserved deserted medieval villages, its earthworks tracing streets abandoned when the abbey (a religious community led by a…
- Near Hungarton
- Some walking
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Settlement · Prehistoric
Knap of Howar
Orkney Islands
A farmstead of the first farming age on Papa Westray that may be the oldest standing house in northern Europe.
- Easy path
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Settlement · Prehistoric
Links of Noltland
Orkney Islands
Links of Noltland is a settlement with late Stone Age and early Bronze Age, roughly 2500–800 BC, when metalworking spread, dwellings, protected by…
- Some walking
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Settlement · Prehistoric
Lismore Fields
Derbyshire
Post holes in a Buxton field mark timber houses built by people who were just learning to grow grain: among the earliest farming evidence found any…
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Settlement · Medieval
Lochleven Castle
Perth and Kinross
Besieged in 1335 by an English force that dammed the loch to drown it. The captain went off to a saint's festival, and the defenders broke the dam.
- Some walking
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Settlement · Prehistoric
Must Farm
Cambridgeshire
A Bronze Age village that burned, collapsed into a river and was sealed in oxygen-starved silt: preserving whole roof timbers, textiles and meals i…
- Near Peterborough
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Sacred place · Prehistoric
Ness of Brodgar
Orkney Islands
Ness of Brodgar preserves an archaeological site between the Ring of Brodgar and the Stones of Stenness.
- Near Stenness
- Easy path
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Fortified place · Iron Age
Portfield Hillfort
Lancashire
Portfield Hillfort is a rare north-west English enclosure later enlarged with additional banks, with excavations revealing use from the late Stone…
- Near Whalley
- Rough ground
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Settlement · Iron Age
Ringmoor
Dorset
Ringmoor is a well-preserved Iron Age (from around 800 BC up to the Roman conquest) and Romano-British (Britain under Roman rule, AD 43–410) farmin…
- Near Okeford Fitzpaine
- Some walking
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Settlement · Medieval
Rispain Camp
Dumfries and Galloway
Rispain Camp is one of Scotland’s major Iron Age (from about 800 BC until the Romans came) sites, where unusually well-preserved ramparts and excav…
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Settlement · Prehistoric
Shearplace Hill Enclosure
Dorset
Shearplace Hill Enclosure is a scheduled Bronze Age (the period from about 2500 to 800 BC) farmstead where excavated round houses, trackways and do…
- Near Cerne Abbas
- Some walking
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Settlement · Iron Age
Shipton Hill Settlement
Dorset
Shipton Hill Settlement is a rare small Iron Age (roughly 800 BC until the Roman conquest) defended community, whose natural slopes, banks and dome…
- Near Shipton Gorge
- Some walking
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Settlement · Roman
Smedmore Hill Settlement
Dorset
Smedmore Hill preserves a rare, well-preserved Romano-British (Britain under Roman rule, AD 43–410) farming settlement, where terraced small enclos…
- Near Corfe Castle
- Some walking
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Fortified place · Iron Age
South Weald Camp
Essex
South Weald Camp is a rare east-of-England late Iron Age hillfort: a defended hilltop settlement from the centuries before Rome arrived: whose alte…
- Easy path
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Settlement · Prehistoric
Standing Stones of Yoxie
Shetland Islands
Roughly a hundred yards southeast of Benie Hoose, close to the cliff edge at Yoxie Geo on Whalsay's northeastern coast, a partly ruined Neolithic (…
- Easy path
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Settlement · Roman
Ting Mound
Cumbria
Its close resemblance to the Isle of Man's Tynwald Mount is the strongest evidence that Viking settlers raised this terraced mound as their own ope…
- Near Carlisle
- Some walking
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Settlement · Medieval
Winterborne Farringdon
Dorset
Winterborne Farringdon is a deserted medieval village whose platforms, enclosures, tracks, lynchets and church remnant preserve the footprint of a…
- Near Dorchester
- Some walking
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Fortified place · Iron Age
Woodbury Hill, Dorset
Dorset
Woodbury Hill combines an Iron Age hillfort: a defended hilltop settlement dating from from around 800 BC up to the Roman conquest: with a medieval…
- Near Bere Regis
- Some walking
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Settlement · Iron Age
Woodcutts Settlement
Dorset
Woodcutts Settlement is a classic Pitt Rivers excavation, revealing how a small farmstead on Cranborne Chase changed across three Roman-period phas…
- Near Woodcutts
- Some walking
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More places
Briefer entries: recorded and worth knowing, with fuller pages to come.
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Settlement · Medieval
Aghaherrish
County Fermanagh
Aghaherrish combines a documented Plantation-era naming record with Boho’s water landscape and a scheduled rath with a counterscarp: the outer slop…
- Near Belcoo
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Settlement · Medieval
Aghahoorin
County Fermanagh
Aghahoorin preserves Boho’s layered place-name history alongside a scheduled bivallate rath (an early-medieval Irish farmstead ringed by an earth b…
- Near Belcoo
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Settlement · Medieval
Aghalislone
County Antrim
Aghalislone contains both a protected rath, a farmstead enclosed by a circular bank and ditch, and barrow, a burial mound, with nearby finds reveal…
- Near Ballycastle
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Settlement · Medieval
Antiville
County Antrim
Antiville’s excavated house and souterrain (a stone-lined tunnel dug beneath a settlement) show how radiocarbon dating and landscape evidence can o…
- Near Ballycastle
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Settlement · Medieval
Castletown, Cheshire
Cheshire
A whole village vanished here, leaving nothing but earthwork (earth moved and shaped into banks and ditches rather than built up in stone) traces o…
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Settlement · Iron Age
Chisenbury Camp
Wiltshire
Excavated pottery, worked stone and human burial remains now sit in Devizes Museum, the clearest surviving trace of an Iron Age (from around 800 BC…
- Near Upavon
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Settlement · Prehistoric
Dorman's Island, Whitefield Loch
Dumfries and Galloway
Dorman's Island is a crannog (a dwelling built on an artificial island in a loch) in Whitefield Loch, in the parish of Old Luce in the Machars peni…
- Near Newton Stewart
- Some walking
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Settlement · Medieval
Gainsthorpe
Lincolnshire
Gainsthorpe is a well-preserved deserted medieval village where sunken roads and raised tofts and crofts make a lost settlement plan visible in the…
- Near Hibaldstow
- Some walking
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Fortified place · Prehistoric
Haughey's Fort
Armagh
Haughey's Fort is a large late Bronze Age (roughly 2500–800 BC) hilltop enclosure near Armagh, whose concentric ditches preserve an earlier ceremon…
- Near Armagh
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Settlement · Medieval
Massereene Lower
Antrim
Massereene Lower is a County Antrim barony with Ireland's largest documented concentration of ringforts, making this administrative landscape unusu…
- Near Antrim
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Settlement · Prehistoric
Mount Sandel Mesolithic site
County Londonderry
Mount Sandel is one of Ireland’s oldest archaeological sites and preserves the country’s only confirmed Mesolithic (the middle Stone Age, roughly 9…
- Near Coleraine
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Fortified place · Medieval
Muntober
County Tyrone
Muntober pairs a substantial Tyrone townland with the protected Black Fort rath (an early-medieval Irish farmstead ringed by an earth bank) and a r…
- Near Omagh
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Fortified place · Medieval
Oughtdoorish
County Tyrone
Oughtdoorish brings together a large Tyrone townland, a protected rath (a ringfort, a farmstead enclosed by a circular bank and ditch), and a name…
- Near Omagh
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Sacred place · Prehistoric
St Ninian's Isle
Shetland Islands
St Ninian's Isle sits off the south-western coast of Shetland Mainland, joined to it by a 500-metre tombolo, the largest in the United Kingdom. Loc…
- Easy path
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Settlement · Prehistoric
Stanydale Temple
Shetland Islands
In a field roughly 21 miles by road northwest of Lerwick, on Mainland Shetland, a large walled enclosure is all that survives of a building once ro…
- Easy path
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