Knowlton Church and Earthworks
A roofless Norman church stands inside a Neolithic henge, one of three earthworks built in this corner of east Dorset
Open accessfree to visit at any reasonable time
Substantial ruinsruined, but plenty survives above ground
A roofless Norman church here sits within a monument thousands of years older than itself — a ditch-and-bank enclosure, called a henge, that Neolithic people dug sometime between roughly 3000 and 2000 BC, one of three such earthworks raised close together at Knowlton, with two more nearby. Dozens of burial mounds lie within a mile of the church, and the largest, the Great Barrow, rises under its own clump of trees just to the east, the biggest barrow anywhere in Dorset.
The church itself came much later. Normans built it in stone and flint in the 12th century, raising round-headed arches that still stand in the chancel and nave arcade, and a flint-and-stone tower was added in the 15th century. Why someone chose to put a church inside a pagan monument isn’t recorded, but the church was used for worship until the 17th century and has stood roofless since.
The site costs nothing to explore, with no set hours to work around. More of this prehistoric landscape survives nearby, including the western end of the Dorset Cursus, two banks of chalk that once ran for six miles across this same stretch of down.
