Roulston Scar

A massive Iron Age promontory Hill Fort only 20km from Farndale

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Directions

As you follow the A170 between Thirsk and Helmsley you will follow a steep climb at Sutton Bank and you will see before you a wooded cliff which dominates the land. What might not be immediately apparent is that this once formed an Iron Age hill fort on colossal scale.

There is a car park and visitor centre at the top of the hill. It costs a bit to park your car. From there you can walk along the ridgeline by following the Cleveland Way, and after about a kilometre you will come to the hillfort of Roulston Scar. A little further along you will also see the top of a preserved hill figure, known as the Kilburn White Horse, a Victorian work, inspired by the story of the Kilburn Horse.

Alternatively you can take the minor road which leads to the Yorkshire Gliding Club and there is a car park at the end. From there you can follow a slightly shorter path to Roulston Scar.

Iron Age Promontory Hill Fort on Colossal Scale

Roulston Scar at Sutton Bank is a limestone cliff which overlooks the Vale of York, between Helmsley and Thirsk, some 20km to the west of Kirkbymoorside and Farndale. It is a large Iron Age promontory fort dating to about 500 to 400 BCE.

The fort is built of timber palisades encircled by a two kilometre circuit of ramparts cut out of solid limestone. The scale of the site is extraordinary.

The English Heritage archaeologist Alastair Oswald was astonished by its scale, “Such a large fort would have taken a vast amount of timber and labour to build, which poses many more intriguing questions.”

Roulston Scar is the largest of a series of promontory forts located along the west and north edges of the Hambleton Hills. Promontory forts are a type of hillfort in which conspicuous, naturally-defended sites are adapted as enclosures by earth or stone ramparts placed across the neck of a spur to divide it from the surrounding land.

The large, impressive scale of the fort was likely to have demonstrated aristocratic prestige as well as its defensive nature. The fort might have been sited on a boundary between the late Iron Age tribes known as the Parisi and Brigantes.

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Report on a Bronze Age Burial at Sutton Bank, Edward Fawcett, Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, Volume 33, page 419.