Hamdon Hill Iron Age hill fort towering above the village of Stoke-sub-Hamdon
       
     
Banks or spoil heaps? Who knows?
       
     
This section, walking East from the War memorial, is bivalate with the lower earthwork hidden in the trees
       
     
An entrance/exit on the Eastern side looking across to the Eastern arm of the fort and St. Michael's Hill beyond that
       
     
The modern stone circle celebrating the Millennium and the men who worked the quarry for 500 years
       
     
Hamdon Hill Iron Age hill fort towering above the village of Stoke-sub-Hamdon
       
     
Hamdon Hill Iron Age hill fort towering above the village of Stoke-sub-Hamdon

Hamdon Hill, or Ham Hill as it’s also known, is the largest hill fort in Somerset with about 3 miles of earthworks encompassing various stone quarries (mostly now disused), a pub and a War memorial. It’s difficult to understand exactly what’s going on in the interior because of the quarrying as, what look like earthworks, often turn out to be spoil heaps stretching back some 500 years. The hill itself also predates the Iron Age as traces of Neolithic and Bronze Age habitation have also been found. Various burials discovered during excavations in 2013 revealed a rather grisly period in the fort’s history where young women’s bodies, sometimes just their skulls, were deposited in what may have been food pits. Now the hill fort is a pleasant place to take a walk with staggering views in almost all directions.

Banks or spoil heaps? Who knows?
       
     
Banks or spoil heaps? Who knows?
This section, walking East from the War memorial, is bivalate with the lower earthwork hidden in the trees
       
     
This section, walking East from the War memorial, is bivalate with the lower earthwork hidden in the trees
An entrance/exit on the Eastern side looking across to the Eastern arm of the fort and St. Michael's Hill beyond that
       
     
An entrance/exit on the Eastern side looking across to the Eastern arm of the fort and St. Michael's Hill beyond that
The modern stone circle celebrating the Millennium and the men who worked the quarry for 500 years
       
     
The modern stone circle celebrating the Millennium and the men who worked the quarry for 500 years