Abbotsbury Castle, before there was a village

There was a fort here long before there was a village. Abbotsbury Castle sits on Wears Hill above the coast road, west of the village. It is an Iron Age hillfort of about ten acres, four and a half of them inside the ramparts, and it belonged to the Durotriges, the tribe that held Dorset before the Romans came. Vespasian's Second Augustan Legion took it in the invasion of AD 43, and by most accounts it did not take them long. The Romans never bothered to settle here afterwards. The fort is a scheduled monument. You can walk up any day, from the lay-by on the B3157 or along the Ridgeway, and the whole of Lyme Bay is below you.

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