The Roman army accomplished their invasion of Britain through a systematic campaign of occupation and subjugation of the native tribes. Early military sites in central southern and southwest England can be attributed to the Second Augustan Legion, who were tasked with taking this region.
One of their lesser known, but no less important sites, is Waddon Hill Roman Fort, situated deep within Durotrigian territory between the modern settlements of Broadwindsor and Beaminster.
This site has been a focus of interest since finds were discovered during quarry work in the late 19th century. Unfortunately, the hill was severely impacted by this activity – and over half of the fort area is estimated to have been lost to the quarry. Many significant finds collected at this time are now safely housed at Bridport Museum and this project has funded conservation of one of the most iconic pieces - a dagger, which will be put on permanent display in 2025.
Building on existing work
The site came to the attention of Graham Webster who went on to conduct a systematic excavation of the surviving half of the fort between 1959 and 1969. The published results describe many of the key features of the fort as well as the finds that were recovered (Webster 1960, 1965 & 1979).
A view of the south side of Waddon Hill, looking west towards Lewesdon HillIt was concluded that Waddon Hill was occupied for at least a decade from approximately AD 50 by both legionary infantry and auxiliary cavalry units in the same manner as the fort at Hod Hill (Webster 1979, 55).
Webster has undoubtedly made a significant contribution towards our understanding of this site, but in the half century since his work was undertaken our knowledge of the invasion campaign has developed.
New sites have been identified and our understanding of the nature of the takeover, particularly of the Durotriges tribe, has softened, leading us to look at the roles of these sites in ways other than bases solely used to mount acts of aggression from.
Additionally, in the decades since Webster’s project, techniques used to conduct archaeological investigation have developed significantly. Developments of non-intrusive techniques like lidar and geophysical prospection, for example, allow us to continue to advance our understanding of sites like Waddon Hill, which are now protected as Scheduled Monuments and no longer accessible to excavate.
With the aims of building upon Webster's work, increasing our understanding of the history of Waddon Hill, and making information about the site more accessible, this project was established with funding awarded from Dorset National Landscapes Farming in Protected Landscapes Programme in 2023.
Several initial objectives were defined:
- an audit of archaeological records and finds
- a geophysical survey of the fort area and land surrounding the hill
- an academic paper reappraising Webster's results
- documenting new aspects of the site revealed through the geophysical survey and other research
The audit
Finds from Waddon Hill have been located at Bridport, Beaminster, Dorset and other museums and although some aspects of Webster’s primary archive are still outstanding, significantly his original site plans have been found.
These have been used to create a detailed digital site plan that has been geolocated and allied to the geophysical survey data. Context information given on the drawings has also been collected and this means we can relate many of the finds to specific features – essential for phasing and interpretation.
Geophysical survey
Members of Dorset Diggers Community archaeology group assisting with the resistivity surveyThe survey was conducted by GeoFlo over the winter of 2023/24 and the report is available to download, below. The primary survey technique used over the fort area and 13 hectares of land surrounding and elsewhere on the hill was magnetometry. Resistivity was also used within the fort area to maximise the potential level of detail acquired.
The results give an accurate plan of the fort’s internal features, and intriguingly show evidence for probable pre-Roman activity on the hill. The current working theory being that Waddon Hill was an Iron Age hill fort before the Roman occupation.
The survey also contains evidence of activity in the fields around the hill, where there are potential roundhouses and linear features that could be a fort construction camp boundary.
Download the Geophysical Survey Report (pdf, 3.3mb)
Results
The results of the project shall be presented in a forthcoming paper that will be available as an open-source document. Below is an excerpt from the project digital dataset: a plot of the magnetometry data with a conjectured shape of the fort shown as a red line.
