A scheduled monument just outside the city of Salisbury, Figsbury Ring has both Neolithic and Iron Age features and has produced artefacts from both time periods. With impressive views over Salisbury from the top of the ramparts, as well as being a site of special scientific interest filled with wildlife, it is well worth a visit for a good walk as well as its historical background.
- Sarah Nash
- Last Checked and/or Updated 15 December 2021
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- England
Just outside the small village of Firsdown 5 miles from Salisbury, Figsbury Rings lies at the end of a rather potholed track in the middle of the countryside. Now owned by the National Trust, the Ring is free for all to visit, with free parking on site. You enter through a latched gate and walk down a wild hedge-lined path before emerging into a wide open space with ramparts towering above you.
Historical Background
Approaching the site what you see first is the univallate hillfort, an oval enclosure defended by a single line of ramparts surrounded by a ditch. The ramparts are 18 metres wide and 3.4 metres high; the outer ditch is V-shaped, 8 metres wide and nearly a metre deep. The sites was excavated in 1924 by Maud and Ben Cunnington. Maud Cunnington was a Welsh archaeologist well known for her work in the Salisbury area during the early decades of the 20th century. She excavated such sites as West Kennet Long Barrow and Woodhenge. Ben Cunnington was then honorary curator of what is today the Wiltshire Heritage Museum. The Cunningtons recovered Iron Age pottery, and understandably they concluded the site was an Iron Age hillfort.
But it is inside the enclosure we see the source of mystery about the site. Within the ramparts is a neolithic henge with an oval enclosure of 187 metres by 151 metres wide with a single ditch 14 metres wide and 4.5 metres deep. This ditch produced animal and human bones as well as Beaker and Grooved Ware pottery, dating it to the late neolithic. Archaeologists believe that by putting this site into the wider archaeological landscape, that it was probably originally a causewayed enclosure, which would have later been modified into a henge monument.
Causewayed enclosures were not permanent homes for the neolithic population but rather a meeting place possibly used for social, ritual or trade centres in the vagrant society, providing a place of stability for people who were just starting to put down roots. Over time, many causewayed enclosures became settlements, which may well have been the case here, with its transition to henge and then hillfort.
Figsbury Ring was known in antiquity as ‘Chlorus’ Camp’, suggesting that the site was also occupied by the Romans at one point, and it does sit near the Roman road. The Proceedings at the Annual Meeting of the Archaeological Institute of 1845 say that old maps referred to it as such. Chlorus Constantine was an Roman Caesar from 250 AD, and it is known that he campaigned in Britain in 305 AD, dying here a year later, so it is entirely possible, although no evidence of the Romans has been found in excavations of the site.
The site has only been partially excavated. In 1704, a late Bronze Age sword was found by a farmer which is now in the Ashmolean museum. As mentioned above, the first to excavate the site were the Cunningtons in 1924, who established the site as Iron Age. More recent excavations in the 1980s recovered Grooved and Beaker ware, as well as evidence of flint artefacts, identifying the site as older than previously been thought.
The site now is grazed by some friendly cows, and other than the earthworks, there is little else to see of historical interest. The views and wildlife however make up for it, as it is home to a wide variety of orchids, butterflies and insects, including the elusive glow worm. Skylarks swoop and sing in the skies above and the enclosures are filled with a carpet of wildflowers in the summer. Kids love it as they can run up and down the banks and ditches and sometimes there is a rope swing from one of the trees which will keep them amused for ages. Views include Salisbury Cathedral, Old Sarum and small farmhouses dotted across the landscape.
Archaeology Travel Writer
