Sutton Walls Hill Fort

Sutton Walls Hill Fort stands on a low hill six kilometres north of Hereford in Herefordshire. It is an Iron Age earthwork shaped like a long oval, with a deep ditch and an inner bank still visible. The fort once protected a settlement of wooden and stone huts where several hundred people lived. A large wooden wall was added around the year 25 AD to strengthen the defences. Archaeologists have found traces of these buildings and the later Roman repairs. The fort became famous in the first century AD when Roman forces under Ostorius Scapula attacked it in about 48 AD. Excavations uncovered the skeletons of twenty-four inhabitants, many with arrow wounds or signs of beheading. After the battle the Romans took over the site and kept it in use until the third century. Centuries later Offa, king of Mercia, is said to have used the fort as one of his palaces. According to medieval accounts, Offa arranged the murder of Æthelberht II of East Anglia at Sutton Walls in 794. Visitors today walk along the grassy ramparts and look down into the wide ditch. The hilltop offers wide views over the surrounding countryside. Information boards explain the fort’s history from Iron Age beginnings to Roman occupation. The site is quiet, with no modern buildings nearby, so the earthworks stand almost as they did two thousand years ago.