ANCIENT BRITAIN AND THE ROMAN EMPIRE: ca. 300 BC – AD 520
A few miles north of Poole Harbour, on a high point between the rivers Stour and Allen, is the Iron Age fort of Badbury Rings, defended by three concentric rings of ramparts and ditches. It was a key vantage point and principal settlement for the local people, and numerous circular hollows terraced into the domed interior of the hillfort are evidence for the circular timber-framed houses they occupied before the arrival of the Romans. This was a well-populated landscape, as surrounding Badbury, archaeological surveys have revealed three other large settlements and many farmsteads occupied over 2000 years ago.
This area lay within the territory of a tribe known as the Durotriges. The tribe did not capitulate in AD 43 when the emperor Claudius invaded Britain. Initially, the Roman army concentrated on the most powerful tribes in what is now south-east England.
