The Trundle, West Sussex

Location: SU 877 110
This domed hilltop will be familiar to many people who live, work, or drive along the coastal plain near Chichester but especially to those heading to Goodwood for the racing.

St Roche's Hill hillfort is better known as 'The Trundle'. The site occupies a prominent hilltop overlooking the coastal plain near Chichester and is an excellent vantage point from which to watch the horse racing at Goodwood. The hillfort boundary is well preserved and was built in the middle of the 1st millennium BC but within it, and underlying it too, there are the much slighter remains of a Neolithic causewayed enclosure c. 6000 years old.

Few probably realise that the hill overlooking the course hosts the startling remains of an Iron Age hillfort which in turn lies on top of the remains of very rare Neolithic enclosures. 

The hillfort, with its large bank and ditch, is prominent and the highest point once hosted St Roche's church, now marked by a heavily disturbed mound.

The two enclosed modern compounds are what remains of an early warning radar system built during the Second World War.

The site is best approached from the car park to the west of the hillfort - the walk here isn't particularly steep but the views over the coastal plain are magnificent.

The Iron Age hillfort at The Trundle encloses just under 6 hectares within a single bank and external ditch. The rampart is very well preserved and has been constructed in a series of straight lengths. Excavation suggests it was first built in the middle of the 6th-century BC but it overlies circuits of a Neolithic causewayed enclosure.