Castle Old Fort is a small

Iron Age The Iron Age is the final epoch of the three-age division of the prehistory and protohistory of humanity. It was preceded by the Stone Age (Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic) and the Bronze Age (Chalcolithic). The concept has been mostly appl ...

hill fort A hillfort is a type of earthwork used as a fortified refuge or defended settlement, located to exploit a rise in elevation for defensive advantage. They are typically European and of the Bronze Age or Iron Age. Some were used in the post-Roma ...

Stonnall Stonnall is a large village in Staffordshire, England, close to Shenstone, Brownhills, Walsall Wood and Aldridge. It is divided into Upper Stonnall, Stonnall and Lower Stonnall — Upper Stonnall partly lies in the Metropolitan Borough of Walsa ...

, in the

Metropolitan borough A metropolitan borough (or metropolitan district) is a type of local government district in England. Created in 1974 by the Local Government Act 1972, metropolitan boroughs are defined in English law as metropolitan districts within metropolitan ...

Walsall Walsall (, or ; locally ) is a market town and administrative centre in the West Midlands (county), West Midlands County, England. Historic counties of England, Historically part of Staffordshire, it is located north-west of Birmingham, east ...

West Midlands West or Occident is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from east and is the direction in which the Sun sets on the Earth. Etymology The word "west" is a Germanic word passed into some ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

. Its interior is now occupied by a house. The structure is a

promontory fort A promontory fort is a defensive structure located above a steep cliff, often only connected to the mainland by a small neck of land, thus using the topography to reduce the ramparts needed. Although their dating is problematic, most seem to da ...

in that it is situated on the southern side of Castle Hill, presumably enabling its occupiers to overlook the southern approach of the ancient highway, Chester Road. The fort covers acres in an ovoid shape, measuring from north to south and from east to west. It has an earth rampart surrounded by a ditch, with an entrance in the south east. There is some evidence that there may originally have been a second line of defences comprising a bank and a ditch. Castle Old Fort Digital Terrain Model

The seventeenth century archaeologist Robert Plot reported findings of

flint Flint, occasionally flintstone, is a sedimentary cryptocrystalline form of the mineral quartz, categorized as the variety of chert that occurs in chalk or marly limestone. Flint was widely used historically to make stone tools and start fir ...

arrowheads An arrowhead or point is the usually sharpened and hardened tip of an arrow, which contributes a majority of the projectile mass and is responsible for impacting and penetrating a target, as well as to fulfill some special purposes such as s ...

Roman pottery Pottery was produced in enormous quantities in ancient Rome, mostly for utilitarian purposes. It is found all over the former Roman Empire and beyond. Monte Testaccio is a huge mound, waste mound in Rome made almost entirely of broken amphorae us ...

and Roman coins of Otho,

Domitian Domitian (; la, Domitianus; 24 October 51 – 18 September 96) was a Roman emperor who reigned from 81 to 96. The son of Vespasian and the younger brother of Titus, his two predecessors on the throne, he was the last member of the Flavi ...

and

Nero Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus ( ; born Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus; 15 December AD 37 – 9 June AD 68), was the fifth Roman emperor and final emperor of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, reigning from AD 54 un ...

, and the existence of a second entrance in the north west of the fort, in an area that has since been destroyed by quarrying.

References

{{reflist Hill forts in the West Midlands (county) Iron Age sites in England