The 5 best places to learn about Iron Age Britain
The Iron Age in Britain began around the year 800 BC when someone worked out how to melt iron out of ore. Before the Iron Age began, the strongest material people had was Bronze, a combination of copper and tin, both of which have very low melting points and can be melted in a large enough fire. Iron takes much more heat and it took over 2,000 years of using bronze before someone realized that a thicker kiln combined with a set of bellows was the only way to reach the necessary level of heat to melt iron, and after this, a new era of the human race began.
There are thousands of Iron Age sites across the British Isles, but most of these are just small burial mounds or the remaining foundations of a single building, to understand this fascinating time in the best way possible, here are the 5 best places to learn about the Iron Age in Britain.
Maiden castle – Dorset
Maiden Castle Road, Dorchester, Dorset, DT2 9PP
This is the biggest Iron Age fort in Britain and is thought to have been occupied as early as 1,800 BCE when the area was used for growing crops. The walls of the fort began to rise around 600 BCE and were gradually added to over the years as the population and importance of the site increased. By 400 BCE, the inside space of the fort had reached its maximum size of 47 acres and was home to well over 1000 buildings. After the Romans invaded in the first century, the fort seems to have been abandoned and was never re-occupied by its creators, though it’s believed the Romans used it briefly as a fortification. When the Romans left the fort the buildings were never lived in again, and the only use it had was during the medieval period when the top was used for growing crops.
Chysauster Ancient Village – Cornwall
New Mill, Cornwall
The area was occupied during the Bronze Age when the land was first made use of somewhere between 2,000 BCE and 1,000 BCE, but it was mostly small farming projects and isolated buildings. The current remains of the settlement could have been built as early as 400 BCE but more likely to be closer to around 100 BCE, and it was occupied until around the 3rd century AD. Isolated house groupings like this one suggest a small and tightly-knit community that lived off the surrounding land. Ariel photos and ground surveys have found many outlines of old fields and walls, long since abandoned and left to the ages. This is one of the best places to get a sense of how everyday life must have been during the Iron Age, with the thought of your entire life existing on nothing more than farming the fields surrounding your tiny one-room family house.
Old Sarum – Salisbury
Castle Rd, Salisbury SP1 3SD
A large hill fort built around the year 400 BCE and occupied for the entire Roman presence in Britain. As a hill fort it’s one of the biggest and best preserved in the country, but because it was in such an important location, the people who occupied it after the Romans left put their own mark within its walls. When William the Conqueror arrived in 1066 and quickly took control of the country, he occupied the fort and added the large motte hill that can be seen in the middle, and a large outer wall for added protection. Two cathedrals were built during the medieval period and the remains of the biggest one can still be seen today, but these were only built after the new gatehouse was put in place and extensive additions and modifications to the existing fort had taken place.
Carn Euny – Cornwall
Sancreed, Penzance TR20 8RB
The first buildings to go up here were Celtic roundhouses made of timber and thatch no earlier than 500 BCE. Between 50 BCE and 50 AD, the homes were replaced with stone buildings of which the foundations remain to this day. One interesting thing about Iron Age sites in Cornwall is that they mostly kept to themselves and had their own culture and way of doing things, and Carn Euny has an excellent example of this. An underground passage with stone walls called a “fogou” runs under part of the village, a feature that isn’t present anywhere else in British Iron Age sites, but its original purpose is unknown.
Castell Henllys – Pembrokeshire
Meline, Crymych SA41 3UR
Castell Henllys is a small village with minor fortifications surrounding it. The site was first occupied sometime between 500 BCE and 100 BCE before being abandoned for an unknown reason. This site is different from all the other Iron Age sites in Britain because it’s the only one that has reconstructed buildings in the exact same place the Iron Age houses stood. There are four roundhouses and a granary, all built on top of the remains found by the excavation team, making it the most accurately reconstructed Iron Age settlement in Britain. The houses and granaries have all been built in the closest way possibly to what we know of Iron Age construction techniques, and the site gives the best impression and understanding of what it would be like to exist in such a time. There is also a visitor center with artifacts from the Iron Age and plenty of information about the era.
