Stockland Great Castle

Heritage listing

Details The monument includes a prehistoric large univallate hillfort, known as Stockland Great Castle, situated on an east facing slope just below the crest of the long Greensand ridge which lies between the Umborne Brook and the River Yarty. The hillfort has an irregularly shaped interior defended by a single rampart and ditch. A modern road bisects the body of the monument east-west with the greater part of the visible remains standing north of the road. The irregular interior of the hillfort is a maximum 230m east-west by a 270m north-south but the curvature of the defences reduce the available internal area to about 4ha. The site has no natural defences and as a consequence the rampart and ditch of the monument are of massive construction. The rampart survives, north of the modern road, as an earthen/stone bank, with a near vertical inner face 3m high revetted in places by chert stone; this revetting may be of somewhat later date. The rampart is a maximum of 17m wide and chert has also been used to produce a 5m wide stone capping for the flat top along part of its western and northern course. The sloping outer face of the rampart is fronted by a broad ditch some 7m wide and at least 2m deep, the inner face of the ditch conjoining with the outer slope of the rampart to produce a scarp with a combined depth in excess of 6m on the north eastern side of the monument. The original profile of the ditch at its base cannot be seen as it is partially infilled with loose chert, rubble, and soil. The ditch terminates just north of the road on its eastern side at a point where the rampart appears to do likewise and this may indicate the location of the hillfort's original entrance. This is supported by the fact that the rampart takes a slightly different alignment south of the

From the Historic England List Entry under OGL v3.