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Chanctonbury Hill

Sites of Special Scientific Interest in West Sussex
Chanctonbury Ring geograph.org.uk 991317
Chanctonbury Ring geograph.org.uk 991317

Chanctonbury Hill is an 82.7-hectare (204-acre) biological Site of Special Scientific Interest west of Steyning in West Sussex. Part of it is Chanctonbury Ring, an early Iron Age hillfort which contains two Romano-Celtic temples and which is a Scheduled Monument.This site on the steep slope of the South Downs is mainly woodland with some areas of chalk grassland. A dew pond has great crested newts, a species protected under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981. More than sixty species of breeding birds have been recorded, including meadow pipits, corn buntings and green woodpeckers.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Chanctonbury Hill (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Chanctonbury Hill
Wiston Bostal,

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Wikipedia: Chanctonbury HillContinue reading on Wikipedia

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Latitude Longitude
N 50.895 ° E -0.38 °
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Wiston Bostal
BN44 3DP
England, United Kingdom
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Chanctonbury Ring geograph.org.uk 991317
Chanctonbury Ring geograph.org.uk 991317
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Chanctonbury Ring
Chanctonbury Ring

Chanctonbury Ring is a prehistoric hill fort atop Chanctonbury Hill on the South Downs, on the border of the civil parishes of Washington and Wiston in the English county of West Sussex. A ridgeway, now part of the South Downs Way, runs along the hill. It forms part of an ensemble of associated historical features created over a span of more than 2,000 years, including round barrows dating from the Bronze Age to the Saxon periods and dykes dating from the Iron Age and Roman periods. Consisting of a roughly circular low earthen rampart surrounded by a ditch, Chanctonbury Ring is thought to date to the late Bronze Age or early Iron Age. The purpose of the structure is unknown but it could have filled a variety of roles, including a defensive position, a cattle enclosure or even a religious shrine. After a few centuries of usage, it was abandoned for about five hundred years until it was reoccupied during the Roman period. Two Romano-British temples were built in the hill fort's interior, one of which may have been dedicated to a boar cult. After its final abandonment around the late fourth century AD, the hill fort remained unoccupied save for grazing cattle until a mid-18th-century landowner planted a ring of beech trees around its perimeter to beautify the site. They became a famous local landmark until largely being destroyed in the Great Storm of 1987. Periodic replanting on a number of occasions to replace old or destroyed trees has afforded archaeologists the opportunity to carry out a series of excavations which have revealed much about the history of the site.