The 52 Hillforts of Wiltshire Map

My 2022 list of the 52 hillforts of Wiltshire now has a map. The 52 Hillforts of Wiltshire is a standalone interactive gazetteer: the same 52 sites, numbered north to south, with Oxford Atlas notes and 1 m LiDAR.

Each entry carries its Atlas classification — univallate, bivallate, multivallate; contour, promontory, hilltop — graded by how far the sources will bear. The class is morphology, not date. A single rampart and ditch, as at Oliver's Castle, is typical of the earlier Iron Age on the downs; the multiple circuits at Yarnbury, Battlesbury and Barbury are the regional centres of the middle and later Iron Age, their banks still walking as separate lines. Reuse is common. Old Sarum holds a Norman castle and a medieval city inside an Iron Age circuit, and Vespasian's Camp carries a Roman name it has no claim to.

The working part is the LiDAR. The layers are the Environment Agency LIDAR Composite 1 m hillshade, DSM and DTM. A swipe control sets Esri World Imagery against the DTM hillshade, stripping the tree canopy: Wick Ball Camp and The Earldoms, near-invisible on the ground and on satellite imagery, resolve as bare earthworks. Pick a fort, then drag the gold bar along the bottom of the map.

Also on the page: search by name, parish or grid; filters for type, confidence and access; GPX, GeoJSON and KML downloads; and links out to OS Maps, the Atlas record and the NLS six-inch.