Sutton Walls Hill Fort

These very defences were strengthened around the year 25 AD, in the form of a large wooden perimeter wall enclosing the settlement atop the fort.

Archaeological digs have revealed that in around 48 AD, Sutton Walls was attacked by the Romans under the leadership of Ostorius Scapula and 24 of its inhabitants were slain and their bodies were thrown into the ditch.

In this time the Romans greatly strengthened the fort's defences likely constructing a larger and more resilient perimeter wall to establish superiority over the local land and its people.

In Richard of Cirencester's account of the murder, which cannot be substantiated, Offa's queen Cynethryth poisoned her husband's mind until he agreed to have his guest killed.

The medieval historian John Brompton's Chronicon describes how the king's detached head fell off a cart into a ditch where it was found, before it restored a blind man's sight.