I have just added this to the map of places to fly your drone at Drone Scene:
Land owner permission not required.
Parked about 700m North East of the summit in the free car park. The walk takes about 20 minutes up a grassy track. TOAL was from the summit. There's a wooden bench at the top, with amazing 270 degree views of Salisbury Plain and Pewsey Downs.
At 289m Martinsell Hill is the highest point on the Pewsey Downs and provides a panoramic view of Salisbury Plain; on a clear day the spire of Salisbury Cathedral can be seen 25 miles away on the southern horizon.
On the summit plateau of the hill are the traces of an Iron Age hillfort of 32 acres, known as an univallate fort from the single boundary ditch and rampart that surrounds it. The Mid Wilts Way skirts the southern boundary of the fort.
Some 1km to the south-west, along a ridge forming a natural causeway, is another but much smaller Iron Age hillfort. Built on a promontory, it is known as the Giant’s Grave from the significant barrow-like rampart at its centre.
The steep slopes which surround both hillforts reinforce the defensive nature of the manmade ramparts. Nevertheless, modern scholarship suggests that in general Iron Age hillforts were as much settlements for ceremonial purposes as for communal refuge, and the ridge between the hillforts is believed to have been a site for competitive feasting.
In much later centuries it became a custom on Palm Sunday for teams of local youths to hit a ball from the base to the summit of Martinsell using primitive hockey sticks. Oranges were then thrown from the top for the youths to charge down after them, and another sport was to use horses’ skulls to glissade down the steep slopes!
The originator declared that this location was not inside a Flight Restriction Zone at the time of being flown on 06/04/2022. It remains the responsibility of any pilot to check for any changes before flying at the same location.
