Abbotsbury Castle hillfort and the ridge

There was a fort on the hill long before there was a village. Abbotsbury Castle sits on Wears Hill above the coast road, west of the village, on the South Dorset Ridgeway. It is an Iron Age hillfort of about ten acres, four and a half of them inside the ramparts, built by the Durotriges, the tribe that held Dorset before the Romans came. Vespasian's Second Augustan Legion took it in the invasion of AD 43, by most accounts without much of a fight, and the Romans never bothered to settle here afterwards.

The ramparts are still clear on the ground and you can walk the whole circuit. The view is the reason to come: Chesil Beach and the Fleet below you, Portland to the east, and the whole sweep of Lyme Bay to the west. The ridge either side is the South Dorset Ridgeway, with five thousand years of barrows and stones along it.

It is a scheduled monument, free, and open at any time. The quick way up is from the lay-by on the B3157 on Abbotsbury Hill, the viewpoint west of the village; the long way is the Ridgeway path from Blind Lane at the top of the village, or the coast path circuit that takes it in. It is open down, so bring a coat whatever the day is doing below, and the ridge is farmland, so dogs on leads near stock.

Come back by Blind Lane, the sunken lane the coast path uses, and you drop straight into the top of the village. The lay-by on the hill is also the place to stop if you only want the view: the whole village, the chapel, the Fleet and the beach are laid out below it.

South West Coast Path, Abbotsbury Castle walk, The hillfort's story