An Iron age Fort in the South East of England
Outline map of the iron age fort site and its situation in the local area can be found at https://historicengland.org.uk.
From Map Services English Heritage
With reference to the map above and the map provided by English Heritage you can see the area that the Hill fort covers. Looking at the map the boundary/ramparts of the fort follow the contour enclosing the marker.
As you can see from the image below and the google earth image above the fort is overgrown, but from older pictures see links below this woodland is only in recent times and the hill was previous open downs. Picture taken from the public footpath.
This is an iron age fort located on the hill outside Hexton. Unfortunately, the fort is on private land (such a pity that there are so antiquated land laws in England). You can get an idea about the size and scale of the site by walking along the public foot path nearby, if your feeling lucky punk you can always take your life in your hands and stray onto private land and there have a look at you heritage. (not that I would ever condone trespass). Or you can simply contact the landowners and ask for access, I am sure that they will be most reasonable and allow you access.
There is no doubt that this was an imposing structure and evidence of the importance of this area during iron age times.
Bonefire Knoll Just North of Ravensburgh Showing Terracing on the sides
The hill fort is oval and to give you idea of the size it is around 440 meters along the North South axis and 215 along the shorter width. It covers an area of around 90,000 m2 . To the West the inner rampart is almost gone but on the eastern side it is around six meters in places, this rampart is surrounded by a ditch to the western edges, outside this ditch is a smaller rampart between 2 and 3 meters that drops down to a shallow outer ditch. An idea of the rampart profiles can be seen in link for below F Dyer 1962.
The ditch is dug behind the rampart then piled onto the rampart, to increase the height.
There are several aerial photographs of the area taken during the early to mid 20th century when the area was not wooded.
The photos are NV74 to NV78 there are also numbered 18 to 22 when opened to view the larger images
A Sketch and other images in “An Atlas of Hillforts in Britain and Ireland Ravensburgh Castle hillfort New surveys – new interpretations” gives a great overview of the fort, by Ian Brown University of Oxford link on next page.
There is evidence of an entrances to the North West and at the South East, the main entrance though to be in the North West.
Image looking from the public footpath back towards Ravensburgh.
There have been various studies of this fort, I have collected these and provide them for reference, on the next page.