Somehow or other, I managed to miss Maumbury Rings while camping just outside Dorchester last year, but thankfully made no such mistake this year:
Near the end of 'The Hardy Way' (page 201), Margaret Marande informs that Maumbury Rings lies "on the southern outskirts of the town", and that it was originally a "Neolithic henge from the New Stone or early Bronze Age".
However, when the Romans founded Durnovaria (Dorchester), they "heightened the banks of the henge to make an amphitheatre" which, for Hardy, was possibly "the very finest remaining in Britain" ('The Hardy Way', page 201).
Well over a thousand years on, the henge/amphitheatre "was used as a gun emplacement and fort" during the English Civil War ('The Hardy Way', pages 201 and 203).
In the 18th century, it "became a grim place of execution", with the gallows having stood "beyond the south west corner" ('The Hardy Way, page 203).
Finally, Margaret Marande reminds that Hardy chose this place for "furtive encounters in The Mayor of Casterbridge", with there being an "evocative description of it in the novel" ('The Hardy Way', page 203).
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