Poundbury

Poundbury Hill Fort is a Middle Bronze Age hill fort. Roughly rectangular, it is likely that the hill fort was situated at the top of Poundbury Hill for strategic reasons, as it commands views over the River Frome and the Frome Valley.
This major chalk bluff overlooking the river Frome has provided a focus of human settlement for over 4,000 years. It includes evidence of a Neolithic settlement of the 3rd millennium BC; a substantial Bronze Age occupation with hut plans, pits and field systems; an extensive Iron Age hillfort and associated earthworks, plus other structures, enclosures and related burials of the late Iron Age. There is also a section of Roman aqueduct incorporated in the western and northern parts of the monument. On the eastern half of the bluff is situated an earlier Romano-British farmstead; and an extensive later cemetery, possibly Christian, belonging to the Roman town Durnovaria and consisting of some c1450 burials.
The very existence of the hill fort today is thanks to local residents who protested at Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s plan to run the main Dorchester to Yeovil railway line straight through the area, destroying the hill-fort and other local remains. Brunel was finally forced to use the more expensive option of running the line underneath the fort, a much more expensive proposition, but one that thankfully saved this historical site.
The site was first excavated in 1938. Details of the fort's serial development were discovered. In the 4th century BC, the banks were faced with timber and a deep V-shaped ditch was dug. The banks were enlarged and strengthened and a limestone revetment was added, in circa 50 BC.