On Maiden Castle - "Wo ist das Schloss?"

Walking on Maiden Castle this evening, I was approached by two disappointed and confused German hikers (mother and daughter). They'd walked from Abbotsbury, and they were tired after having lost their way near the Hardy Monument , "Where is the Castle? Where is the building?"

"Wo ist das Schloss? Indeed. They showed me their map. They'd been told they mustn't miss it on any account. They'd expected an imposing stone building, or something like the ruins of Corfe Castle.

Maybe maps should give a clearer indication of what to expect. German entry in Wikipedia.

They were hoping to catch a bus back to Abbotsbury.

I fear they might have been doubly disappointed.


I wish I had remembered what William Barnes once wrote, in a letter of August 17th, 1865:

"Castellum...meant an earthwork till stone castella were built in far later times".


See also, another Barnes observation on Maiden Castle

"Barnes derived Maiden from the Celtic 'Mai dun', the stronghold by the plain or with a plain top."

Sir Mortimer Wheeler (1943) argues that the derivation of the name is uncertain: "no attempt to derive it from the Celtic or other originals is of substantive value".

From the biography by Lucy Baxter




Thomas Hardy, A Tryst at an Ancient Earthwork; A Changed Man - ebooks Adelaide

"At one’s every step forward it rises higher against the south sky, with an obtrusive personality that compels the senses to regard it and consider. The eyes may bend in another direction, but never without the consciousness of its heavy, high-shouldered presence at its point of vantage. Across the intervening levels the gale races in a straight line from the fort, as if breathed out of it hitherward. With the shifting of the clouds the faces of the steeps vary in colour and in shade, broad lights appearing where mist and vagueness had prevailed, dissolving in their turn into melancholy gray, which spreads over and eclipses the luminous bluffs. In this so-thought immutable spectacle all is change.

Out of the invisible marine region on the other side birds soar suddenly into the air, and hang over the summits of the heights with the indifference of long familiarity. Their forms are white against the tawny concave of cloud, and the curves they exhibit in their floating signify that they are sea-gulls which have journeyed inland from expected stress of weather. As the birds rise behind the fort, so do the clouds rise behind the birds, almost as it seems, stroking with their bagging bosoms the uppermost flyers.

The profile of the whole stupendous ruin, as seen at a distance of a mile eastward, is cleanly cut as that of a marble inlay. It is varied with protuberances, which from hereabouts have the animal aspect of warts, wens, knuckles, and hips. It may indeed be likened to an enormous many-limbed organism of an antediluvian time — partaking of the cephalopod in shape — lying lifeless, and covered with a thin green cloth, which hides its substance, while revealing its contour. This dull green mantle of herbage stretches down towards the levels, where the ploughs have essayed for centuries to creep up near and yet nearer to the base of the castle, but have always stopped short before reaching it. The furrows of these environing attempts show themselves distinctly, bending to the incline as they trench upon it; mounting in steeper curves, till the steepness baffles them, and their parallel threads show like the striae of waves pausing on the curl. The peculiar place of which these are some of the features is ‘Mai–Dun,’ ‘The Castle of the Great Hill,’ said to be the Dunium of Ptolemy, the capital of the Durotriges, which eventually came into Roman occupation, and was finally deserted on their withdrawal from the island".