A topographical survey was undertaken at Hailes Camp in the civil parish of Hailes, Gloucestershire. The earthwork survey demonstrates that this promontory fort was subject to several phases of development, and was probably first constructed during the Iron Age. It is likely that Hailes Camp was later remodelled into a castle during the middle of the twelfth century by Ralph of Worcester, who also built a church in the valley bottom. Together, the castle at Hailes Camp and the church formed part of a shortlived seigneurial power base for Worcester, who took advantage of the uncertain political and tenurial conditions of the Anarchy in order to seize land from nearby Winchcombe Abbey. The focus of secular and religious power at Hailes was transformed in the middle of the thirteenth century when a Cistercian abbey was established by Richard, Earl of Cornwall. Hailes Abbey acted as a significant economic stimulus, and probably led to settlement expansion outside the monastic precinct. The monks of Hailes also converted Worcester’s earlier church into a chapel gatehouse and constructed a large monastic vallum around their precinct that has since been erroneously identified as the site of Hailes castle. There is little evidence for long-lived occupation of the medieval castle at Hailes Camp, but it is possible it later acted as a prospect mound overlooking the abbey. Following the Dissolution, settlement at Hailes likely contracted and the abbey buildings were used first as a private residence and subsequently as farm structures.
