Cholesbury Camp is a large and well-preserved
Iron Age
The Iron Age is the final epoch of the three-age division of the prehistory and protohistory of humanity. It was preceded by the Stone Age (Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic) and the Bronze Age (Chalcolithic). The concept has been mostly appl ...
hill fort
A hillfort is a type of earthwork used as a fortified refuge or defended settlement, located to exploit a rise in elevation for defensive advantage. They are typically European and of the Bronze Age or Iron Age. Some were used in the post-Roma ...
on the northern edge of the village of
Cholesbury
Cholesbury (recorded as Chelwardisbyry in the 13th century) is a village in Buckinghamshire, England, on the border with Hertfordshire. It is situated in the Chiltern Hills, about east of Wendover, north of Chesham and from Berkhamsted.
Ch ...
in
Buckinghamshire
Buckinghamshire (), abbreviated Bucks, is a ceremonial county in South East England that borders Greater London to the south-east, Berkshire to the south, Oxfordshire to the west, Northamptonshire to the north, Bedfordshire to the north-ea ...
,
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...
. It is roughly oval-shaped and covers an area, including ramparts, of ,
and measures approximately north-east to south-west by north-west to south-east. The interior is a fairly level plateau which has been in agricultural use since the medieval period.
["Cholesbury Camp", information board at location. Chiltern Conservation Board, date unknown.] The hill fort is now a
scheduled ancient monument
In the United Kingdom, a scheduled monument is a nationally important archaeological site or historic building, given protection against unauthorised change.
The various pieces of legislation that legally protect heritage assets from damage and d ...
.
![Cholesbury camp map](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/49/Cholesbury_camp_map.png)
The fort is of the
multivallate
A hillfort is a type of earthwork used as a fortified refuge or defended settlement, located to exploit a rise in elevation for defensive advantage. They are typically European and of the Bronze Age or Iron Age. Some were used in the post-Roma ...
type, in other words having two or more lines of concentric earthworks. Most examples of such forts were built and used during the
British Iron Age
The British Iron Age is a conventional name used in the archaeology of Great Britain, referring to the prehistoric and protohistoric phases of the Iron Age culture of the main island and the smaller islands, typically excluding prehistoric Ire ...
period between the 6th century BC and the
Roman invasion of Britain
The Roman conquest of Britain refers to the conquest of the island of Britain by occupying Roman forces. It began in earnest in AD 43 under Emperor Claudius, and was largely completed in the southern half of Britain by 87 when the Staneg ...
in the 1st century AD.
The period of Cholesbury Camp's construction is unclear, but it has been suggested that it may lie between the 2nd and 1st centuries BC, during the middle to late iron age.
It was previously, though erroneously, attributed to the
Danes
Danes ( da, danskere, ) are a North Germanic ethnic group and nationality native to Denmark and a modern nation identified with the country of Denmark. This connection may be ancestral, legal, historical, or cultural.
Danes generally regard t ...
and until the early 20th century was known locally as "The Danish Camp" and incorrectly recorded as such on maps.
It has also been suggested that it may have been constructed on the same site as an earlier, Bronze Age defensive structure.
![Cholesbury Camp Digital Terrain Model](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6f/Cholesbury_Camp_Digital_Terrain_Model.jpg)
The fort is located in the
Chiltern Hills
The Chiltern Hills is a chalk escarpment in England.
The area, northwest of London, covers stretching from Goring-on-Thames in the southwest to Hitchin in the northeast - across Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire, and Bedfordshire. ...
at an altitude of over . The porosity of the ground in the area severely limited the availability of surface water, essential for livestock, and therefore precluded year-round settlement adjacent to most of the upland pastures. However, there are two
aquifer
An aquifer is an underground layer of water-bearing, permeable rock, rock fractures, or unconsolidated materials (gravel, sand, or silt). Groundwater from aquifers can be extracted using a water well. Aquifers vary greatly in their characterist ...
-fed water sources: Holy (or Holly) and Bury Ponds. The constancy of this supply, over many hundreds of years, is cited as being crucial to the decision as to where to site the hill fort and for the early establishment of the isolated community at Cholesbury.
Structure and layout
![Cholesbury Camp vallum](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4b/Cholesbury_Camp_vallum.jpg)
The earthen ramparts of the sub-oval shaped fort are today largely overgrown with a double belt of mature beech trees, planted in the early 19th century. Inside the ramparts the enclosed area is a level plateau in area, treeless and given over to grazing. There are four entrances to the central enclosure, though only one is thought to be original.
Most of the ramparts still remain well-preserved, though along a section of the southern side the ramparts are missing. The absence of earthworks in this section today is believed to be due to the demolition of ramparts to make way for buildings constructed between the 16th and early 19th centuries, together with associated livestock enclosures and allotments. However, there has also been speculation that the earthworks were always much more modest along this section, providing ample opportunity to exploit as sites for domestic habitation. As properties were built and later enlarged or replaced with more substantial buildings, and their associated allotments became gardens and orchards, the residue of the original ramparts were all but rubbed out and any remaining ditches almost completely infilled. The ramparts on the south-east and south-west quadrants consist principally of two sets of banks (inner and outer) each enclosing a large ditch. On the north-east and north-west quadrant there is a single ditch bounded on each side by a bank.
The inner bank is on average wide with a height that varies between to . Its front slope is angled at about 35 degrees and the rear slope at 50 degrees. The broad, flat top of the bank does not appear to have been lined with timber or stonework.
The adjoining inner ditch ranges from to wide and to deep, in the shape of a steep-sided V with an inner slope of about 50 degrees. The outer bank is less distinct but is still visible on the northern side of the fort. The banks and ditches to the south-east are particularly well-preserved extending the ramparts for a distance of about .
[Cholesbury Camp](_blank)
. ''Pastscape'', English Heritage. Accessed 20 February 2011
The outer ditch and banks of the north-west quadrant do not follow the curvature of the inner rampart over its whole length. The final of the ditch runs almost straight out in a north-north-easterly direction. The triangular section so created is bounded on its northern edge by a shallow ditch and bank.
History of the fort
Period of occupation
![Cholesbury st lawrence1](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f9/Cholesbury_st_lawrence1.jpg)
Excavations by Day Kimball in 1932 indicated that during the Iron Age, Cholesbury Camp was only sparsely, and possibly intermittently inhabited, presumably in times of strife when it provided a refuge or a defensive position.
[Kimble G. D.(1933) Cholesbury Camp J. Brit. Arch. Assn. Vol 39(1) 187-212]
Well-preserved remains of prehistoric hearths or fire-sites and the remains of a clay-lined oven were found. Three of the hearths appear to have been used to smelt iron, also evidenced by finds of
bloomery
A bloomery is a type of metallurgical furnace once used widely for smelting iron from its oxides. The bloomery was the earliest form of smelter capable of smelting iron. Bloomeries produce a porous mass of iron and slag called a ''bloom ...
slag
Slag is a by-product of smelting (pyrometallurgical) ores and used metals. Broadly, it can be classified as ferrous (by-products of processing iron and steel), ferroalloy (by-product of ferroalloy production) or non-ferrous/base metals (by-prod ...
.
Only a few poor quality pottery shards were found from the Middle Iron Age period, in contrast to numerous fragments of Belgic pottery from the Late Iron Age (approximately 200BC-50AD). Lastly, some rare examples of
quern-stone
Quern-stones are stone tools for hand-grinding a wide variety of materials. They are used in pairs. The lower stationary stone of early examples is called a saddle quern, while the upper mobile stone is called a muller, rubber or handstone. The ...
fragments imported from the
Eifel
The Eifel (; lb, Äifel, ) is a low mountain range in western Germany and eastern Belgium. It occupies parts of southwestern North Rhine-Westphalia, northwestern Rhineland-Palatinate and the southern area of the German-speaking Community of ...
region of present-day Germany suggested it might have been a high status encampment.
The main period of occupation appears to have been around the middle of the 1st century BC.
Kimball also speculated from analysis of a series of trenches dug in the 'triangle' of ramparts in the north-western quadrant, that there were remnants of an earlier earthwork structure (single bank and ditch) extending as an arc in a northerly direction away from the hill fort. Kimball concluded that the absence of
Romano-British
The Romano-British culture arose in Britain under the Roman Empire following the Roman conquest in AD 43 and the creation of the province of Britannia. It arose as a fusion of the imported Roman culture with that of the indigenous Britons, a ...
pottery shards strongly indicated the hill fort was generally deserted from the time of the
Roman occupation of Britain
Roman Britain was the period in classical antiquity when large parts of the island of Great Britain were under occupation by the Roman Empire. The occupation lasted from AD 43 to AD 410. During that time, the territory conquered was ...
in 54AD until the early medieval period.
In 1953 there was an accidental find within the Camp of a
gold quarter stater, minted on the continent in the Gallo-Belgic region, between the mid-second and mid-first century BC. Its discovery provided further corroboration for the likely period of occupation postulated by Kimball. Such occurrences can be the result of trade activity, or a gift to a high-ranking individual, or even intentional deposition as a sacred offering to the gods.
Post-Roman
Following the period of Roman administration, as land was cleared for use as
summer pasture, a small settlement gradually developed, associated with nearby
Drayton Beauchamp
Drayton Beauchamp (pronounced 'Beecham') is a village and civil parish within Aylesbury Vale district in Buckinghamshire, England. It is in the east of the county bordering Hertfordshire, about six miles from Aylesbury and two miles from Tring.
...
. More permanent occupation in and around the previously deserted hill fort began during the later
Anglo-Saxon
The Anglo-Saxons were a Cultural identity, cultural group who inhabited England in the Early Middle Ages. They traced their origins to settlers who came to Britain from mainland Europe in the 5th century. However, the ethnogenesis of the Anglo- ...
period leading to an expansion into a
nucleated village A nucleated village, or clustered settlement, is one of the main types of settlement pattern. It is one of the terms used by geographers and landscape historians to classify settlements. It is most accurate with regard to planned settlements: its c ...
from which the present-day village of Cholesbury eventually developed. The first record of the settlement's name, as ''Chelwoldesbyr'', was at the end of the 13th century. The name derives from the Anglo-Saxon ''Ceolweald's burh'' (i.e. the fortified place of Ceolweald's people).
Mediaeval period
A small amount of mediaeval pottery shards were found by Kimball in 1932 which he concluded were not related to reoccupation, but rather the result of the manuring of the fields during the early stages of the establishment of the settlement outside the Camp.
However, a
geophysical
Geophysics () is a subject of natural science concerned with the physical processes and physical properties of the Earth and its surrounding space environment, and the use of quantitative methods for their analysis. The term ''geophysics'' som ...
survey carried out in the interior of the fort in 2000 found possible evidence that the interior may have been reoccupied in the mediaeval period. The results suggested a possible site of an early
manor house
A manor house was historically the main residence of the lord of the manor. The house formed the administrative centre of a manor in the European feudal system; within its great hall were held the lord's manorial courts, communal meals w ...
associated with the church which dates from the around the 12th century. Subsequently,
Cholesbury Manor House
Cholesbury Manor House which is close to the centre of Cholesbury, Buckinghamshire is where the Lord of the Manor held his Court periodically between 1599 and 1607. The building dates back to the end of the 16th century. It is a Grade II Listed ...
was constructed in the 16th century located on the southern range of the ramparts of the hill fort.
Church of St Lawrence
Today the Church of St Lawrence is located within the remains of the defences of the Iron Age fort, one of two such churches of the same name built within a hill fort in Buckinghamshire. Its location suggests that the fort still had some kind of politico-religious significance long after its original use had been forgotten. The oldest parts of the present church were built in the
Early English Style
English Gothic is an architectural style that flourished from the late 12th until the mid-17th century. The style was most prominently used in the construction of cathedrals and churches. Gothic architecture's defining features are pointed ar ...
, dating the original stone-built church to the 12–13th century, which possibly replaced an earlier Anglo-Saxon wooden church. After falling into disrepair the church was partly rebuilt and restored in the 1870s in the Victorian style.
Cholesbury Parish British History Online
, Retrieved 21-02-2011
References
{{Iron Age hillforts in England
Buildings and structures completed in the 1st century BC
Archaeological sites in Buckinghamshire
English Heritage sites in Buckinghamshire
Hill forts in Buckinghamshire
Scheduled monuments in Buckinghamshire
1st-century BC fortifications