Hillfort known as Slapton Castle

No individual builders or residents are known. The single main defensive circuit belongs to later prehistory, when a local community enclosed the spur. Finds from the ground may eventually narrow its date and reveal whether construction, occupation and later repair happened in one phase or several.

A bank, outer ditch and further bank crossed the contours around a narrow interior. At the original eastern gate, a long projecting earthwork overlooked the whole approach and forced entrants past a defended side. A road now follows the fort's long line and cuts through both ends.

Flint and pottery have been collected where the south-western defences widen. Groups of beach pebbles just inside the rampart may have been stockpiles of stones for slings, though that use is not certain. Buried layers remain where an extra gateway may once have been planned or abandoned.

Earthworks north of the lane retain clear height and depth, including the outer bank. Cultivation has reduced those to the south, where the circuit is mostly a broad step in the field. Parts of the eastern approach work and a short south-west rampart survive, with filled ditches continuing below ground.

The eastern approach makes Slapton more informative than a simple enclosed hilltop. It shows careful control of movement and visibility, while the different levels of survival demonstrate how roads and farming can flatten a fort without erasing all of its buried evidence.