The 5 best Iron Age sights in Britain

The Iron Age ran from around 800 BC until the Romans first arrived in 43 AD, who brought with them the technology to make steel and other metals. Before their arrival the people of Britain led a semi hunter-gatherer lifestyle they combined with farming a small selection of basic crops, such as grain and beans. With the most advanced material they had to work with being iron, their levels of technology were focused on farming and war, which led to a lack of a written language or the development of mortar and masonry.

Without the ability to set stone walls with mortar, buildings had to be made from either wood or stacked stone, with a clay and soil mixture in between for stability. Because of this, there were no castles or set stone buildings constructed during the Iron Age, and the closest thing they had to a castle was the earthen mound hill fort.

Most Iron Age sites that remain today are little more than the bottoms of the wall foundations, and all roundhouses and woodworks have long since rotted away. Here are the 5 best Iron Age sights in Britain to visit today and are all either reconstructions or the remains of the larger earthen mound settlements.

1) Maiden Castle – Dorset

Established around 600 BC, this huge hill fort gives a good idea of the amount of work people put into making their villages safe, and holds the title of the largest hill fort in Europe. When not out working in the fields during the day, the people would be hiding behind the safety of their walls as these independent settlements were often at war with one another.

( An artist’s impression of how the hill fort may have looked in its day)

2) Castell Henllys Iron Age village – Pembrokeshire

This is one of the best examples in the UK of how Iron Age people used to live in a typical village. There are 5 homes and a couple of smaller outbuildings, one of which is a granary. The village has been constructed using traditional methods with as much accuracy as possible to how it would have been during its day.

There’s a small visitor center that has numerous displays and information boards about all the Iron Age artifacts found at the site and is one of the best places to learn about how they lived.

(Inside one of the roundhouses at Castell Henllys)

3) Chysauster Iron Age Village – Cornwall

When most people think of the Iron Age they normally picture the classic roundhouse, but many of the smaller villages consisted of small multi-house enclosures.

There are the remains of seven houses here and unlike the reconstruction at Castell Henllys, these are genuine Iron Age dwellings people actually used to live in. It goes without saying there isn’t much left now, but the remains show the sizes of the dwellings people had to live in, and the landscape has been unchanged since the days it was occupied.

4) Butser Ancient Farm – Hampshire

This is an open-air museum that contains a farm reconstruction including buildings from the Stone Age, iron age, and Roman Britain. It’s one of the best places in the UK to learn about how people from the Iron Age managed to feed themselves, and the very limited diet they were forced to live off.

The Butser ancient farm also holds courses on everything from flint knapping to twisting plant fibers into fabrics. For a look at some of the courses they have to offer you can find their website at butser ancient farm

5) Broch of Gurness – Orkney

This walled village was the center point of the territory of whoever happened to rule the area at the time and acted as the “capital” for a collection of smaller nearby villages. It shows how small the living space each person had, often being packed in a room along with their entire families and having dozens of other people within a matter of a few meters.

This site is one of ten others in the surrounding area, though this one is the most impressive by far.