Pilsdon Pen
hill in Dorset, England, UK
Pilsdon Pen is a 277-metre (909 ft) hill in Dorset in South West England, situated at the north end of the Marshwood Vale, approximately 4.5 miles (7.2 km) west of Beaminster. It is Dorset's second highest point and has panoramic views extending for many miles. It was bequeathed to the National Trust by the Pinney family in 1982. For many years it was thought to be Dorset's highest hill, until modern survey revealed that nearby Lewesdon Hill was 2 metres higher.
Geology
The hill is a lower greensand Cretaceous outcrop situated amongst Jurassic strata of marl and clay, at the border between the chalk of South-East England and the granite of Devon and Cornwall.
Archaeology
The hill is topped by an Iron Age multivallate Durotrigian hillfort which was excavated in the 1960s by Peter Gelling of the University of Birmingham with his wife Margaret Gelling at the request of the then owner, Michael Pinney. The remains of 14 roundhouses were uncovered near the centre of the hill fort. Surveys were also carried out by the National Trust in 1982, the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England in 1995, and the University of Bournemouth in 2016.
The rectilinear (square) structures in the centre of the fort are a medieval "pillow mounds" (man-made mounds for breeding rabbits), though Gelling hoped pre-excavation they might be Roman or Saxon. Very similar structures of similar medieval age were found by Cunliffe at Danebury Hill Fort.
The public source identifies “Pilsdon Pen” as hill in Dorset, England, UK. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Pilsdon, hill and Dorset.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3905049. Authority coordinates are 50.806, -2.834. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1982, 1995 and 2016.
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This entry incorporates text from “Pilsdon Pen” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.