[2] Castle Rings has been dated to the Iron Age and is at an altitude of 228 metres (748 ft) upon Upper Greensand sandstone beds.

[4] Lady Theodora Grosvenor described the fort in her 1867 book Motcombe, Past and Present: ...a fine encampment, enclosing a space of about 12 acres, and considered to have been originally British, which exists within the angle where the roads from Semley Church and Donhead to Shaftesbury unite by Wincombe Lodge.

At the south end where it crosses fields the bank is much reduced by ploughing, with a maximum height of 0.6 metres (2.0 ft) and traces of a ploughed-out ditch.

[5] A metal detectorist recovered a hoard of stater coins from within Castle Rings and was subsequently fined for looting a Scheduled Ancient Monument.

The finder was prosecuted under the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Areas Act 1979; he was found guilty and fined £100 (equivalent to £355 in modern currency).

The find was offered for sale to the Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum, which refused the purchase on the grounds that it neither wished to financially reward a looter nor acquire looted artefacts.