“On a hill south-east of the House, there is a very large circular entrenchment … with some large old oaks growing on its banks”

- George Lipscomb – The History and Antiquities of the County of Buckingham Vol. VIII (1847)[i]

Physical description of the Camp

Bulstrode Camp (Map Reference SU994880, Landranger Map Number LR175) is a good example of a large multivallate[ii] hillfort.  It stands at the south-eastern end of the Misbourne Valley, between that river and the Alderbourne.  It is the largest hillfort in Buckinghamshire, covering an area of 10.67 hectares (26.38 acres). [iii]  It would originally have stood on an unwooded plateau and been visible from some distance, dominating the surrounding countryside.  The name Bulstrode, first recorded as ‘Burstrod’, derives from the Anglo-Saxon for “the marsh belonging to the fort”.[iv]

One of the old oaks at the Camp.  These trees may have been planted as part of a landscaping scheme in the seventeenth-century

General view of the north-eastern

quadrant of the Camp

A view along part of the ditch in summer

The total defensive system is about 27 metres (89 feet) wide.  The inner rampart reaches a maximum height of 3.7 metres (12 feet) above its ditch, while the outer rampart reaches a maximum height of 1.8-2.1 metres (6-7 feet) above its ditch.  The ramparts have been eroded and would certainly have been higher in antiquity.  Serious levelling of the earthworks has occurred on the eastern side, just north of the footpath.  This levelling looks as if it is connected with an avenue heading towards Bulstrode House shown on the 1686 Bulstrode estate map.  An estate tradition claims that one of the Dukes of Portland levelled the rampart at the other, western, end of this avenue as well.[vi] 

Most large multivallate hillforts had two entrances.[vii]  There are five modern entrances to the Camp, but none of them is necessarily original.

When was the Camp constructed?

Until the late nineteenth-century such fortifications were believed to be Roman, Saxon or Danish rather than British. Indeed the Camp is still described as Saxon in a London Underground publication of c. 1922. This, combined with equally inaccurate etymology, led to the creation of an entertaining legend about the Camp in which the name Bulstrode, with its apparent reference to bulls, was explained by the story that the Saxon Shobbington family had resisted the Norman Conquest by attacking the Normans riding astride bulls.  The Camp was supposedly the remains of entrenchments erected by the Shobbingtons.  The story first appears pasted into the cover of a book of letters written by Sir Richard Bulstrode (1617- 1711).[viii]  It is repeated in both George Lipscomb’s The History and Antiquities of the County of Buckingham (1847) and James Joseph Sheahan’s History and Topography of Buckinghamshire (1862). 

The antiquarian Thomas Pennant (1726-1798) believed the Camp to have been built by Caesar during his invasions of Britain.[ix]

A later attempt to explain the Camp tried to marry older and newer views about when hillforts were constructed.  On 19^th July 1883 the Reverend Bryant Burgess argued that the Camp was a Saxon fort used against the Danes, but added that it might have been “a stockaded British village” before his imagined Saxon occupation.[x] 

The mid-Victorian view of ancient Britons (1865)[xi]

 Today we know that most hillforts were built between the Late Bronze Age (after 1200 BCE[xii]) and the Middle Iron Age (before 100 BCE), with a high point of construction and occupation in the Early Iron Age (c. 600-300 BCE).[xiii]  Large multivallate forts began appearing around 600 BCE, and in some cases continued being used until the mid-1^st century CE.  Some were reoccupied in the 3^rd and 4^th centuries CE.  Dates of construction and occupation vary depending on where in England the hillfort is.[xiv]

It is impossible to give a precise date for the construction of the Camp, and in any case it may very well have evolved over time.  Small amounts of pottery found by archaeological excavators in 1924 were identified as being of Early Iron Age date.[xv]  Bronze objects are also said to have been found in the vicinity, which may suggest Bronze Age (c. 2000-750 BCE) occupation of the site.[xvi]

A mid-Victorian drawing of

ancient British weapons (1865)[xxi]

Hillforts can be of two types, earlier ‘wall-and-fill’ forts and later ‘dump construction’ forts.[xvii]  The earlier method involved constructing the ramparts using stone or timber revetments.  The later method simply involved creating an unsupported rampart from the material removed from the ditch.  The limited archaeological excavations of 1924 suggested that the Camp has a ‘dump construction’ rampart and that it dates from a single period.[xviii]  This, and the fact that the Camp is multivallate, suggest that it is not very early.[xix]  Bambi Stainton, an authority on this period and a contributor to Branigan’s The Archaeology of the Chilterns (1994), is reported as dating it to c. 400 BCE, drawing parallels with Ivinghoe Beacon hillfort, where material of this date has been found.[xx]

Prehistoric Gerrards Cross

The people who built the Camp were not Gerrards Cross’s first residents.  Palaeolithic (pre-8000 BCE) hand axes have been found at Bulstrode Park and along the A40.[xxii]  In 1966 and 1967 four Mesolithic (c. 8000-4000 BCE) sites were found along the A413.  Two were excavated and an Early Mesolithic (pre-6750 BCE) date was suggested.  When the M25 was being constructed a Late Mesolithic site was found, with artefacts giving a radiocarbon date of 4150 BCE ± 120 years.[xxiii]

Recently geophysical evidence has also been found suggesting that there may be the remains of a Neolithic (c. 3100-2000 BCE) or Bronze Age long barrow in the south-west quadrant of the Camp itself.  If this is the case this burial mound predates the Camp and suggests that the site was of importance to human beings significantly before the fortification was built.[xxiv]  Other long barrows found in the Chilterns have dated from the Early Neolithic (c. 3100-2600 BCE).[xxv]

What was the Camp’s function?

Not only are we not entirely sure about when the Camp was built, we do not know exactly what it was built for.  It has been suggested that the camp was constructed where it is because it guarded a prehistoric route along the Misbourne Valley, or that it was intended as “a summer camp for stock movement or control”, or that it was “a meeting point for tribal or family groups in the Chiltern and middle Thames area”.[xxvi]

Views about hillforts have changed in recent years.  As Stewart Bryant, County Archaeologist for Hertfordshire, says in his chapter on the late Bronze and Iron Ages in Branigan’s The Archaeology of the Chilterns:

“In the past explanations have tended to view hillforts as residences of the tribal chiefs or as defended towns and have also emphasised their role in warfare.  These explanations have largely proved to be unsatisfactory, and more recent theories have concentrated on their role in the local social and economic system particularly as centres for the storage and redistribution of agricultural produce.  It now seems likely that one of the main functions of hillforts was to serve as secure centres for the storage of grain and stock gathered from the smaller farming settlements in the surrounding territory”.[xxvii]

Hillforts may have served as refuges in times of danger, but this was probably a secondary role.  Another authority points out that there is “good evidence that forts were intended by their builders as sites for permanent human settlement, although in some major forts this settlement may not have occupied the whole of the interior area, and may not in fact have lasted for very long”.[xxviii]  Intensive occupation was probably only seasonal.  Hillforts may also have served as centres for ceremonial and religious activities.  It has also been suggested that hillforts were status symbols.[xxix]

Modern research suggests that chieftains lived in smaller ‘ringworks’[xxx] and that most of the population lived in farms and hamlets.[xxxi]  The closest known Iron Age settlements to the Camp were some 10 kilometres (6.2 miles) away in the lowland Colne Valley.[xxxii]

The Catuvellauni Tribe[xxxiii]

It has been suggested that the Camp may have been a settlement of the Catuvellauni.[xxxiv]  Gerrards Cross was probably in the territory of the tribe.  Their lands initially comprised Hertfordshire and the Chilterns, but eventually covered most of south-east England.  Catuvellauni coins have been found at High Wycombe.[xxxv]

The Catuvellauni were a relatively late development.  Cassivellaunus, who resisted[xxxvii] Caesar’s invasion in 54 BCE, may have been king of the Catuvellauni, though some argue that the tribe only came into existence after Caesar’s invasion.  The larger Catuvellauni kingdom, which appears to have developed partly because of Catuvellauni control of trade with Rome, came into being in the era around 20 BCE.  It was ruled from Verlamion[xxxviii] and later, by CE 10, from Colchester, formerly in the territory of the Trinovantes.

The Catuvellauni probably did not build the Camp, which seems likely to predate them.  It is in fact questionable whether the Catuvellauni used the Camp at all, as there is little evidence suggesting that they used or re-occupied earlier hillforts.  Large and complex Catuvellauni settlements existed to the north and north-east of Gerrards Cross, the nearest being Cow Roast, near Tring.

A supposed ancient British coin, drawn for a Victorian book.  This is not a Catuvellauni coin.  In fact it looks like a Gaulish coin, made in France by the Ambiani tribe and then imported into Britain.  Like many Celtic coins, it is a loose interpretation of a Macedonian stater[xxxvi] 

It is highly unlikely that the Camp was defended against the Claudian invasion of CE 43.  It may not have been occupied and, in any case, the Catuvellauni state being relatively centralised, the Roman forces headed for the capital at Colchester, away from the Chilterns.  The transition to Roman rule in the Chilterns seems to have been relatively smooth.[xxxix]

The Camp after the Roman invasion

There is no evidence that the Camp was occupied after the arrival of the Romans.[xl]  However there were Roman pottery kilns nearby, at Fulmer and Hedgerley.  One was discovered at Wapseys Wood in 1935, and several others have been found since 1963.  They supplied nearby villas, but not major towns, and may have been seasonal operations.[xli]

There were two early modern avenues on the Camp by 1686, one going towards Bulstrode House and one to a house and buildings that once existed in the northwest corner.  The Camp may have been ploughed in the Middle Ages, and was certainly ploughed during the Second World War.  It was also used as a practice landing ground for Westland Lysander aircraft, the machines used to land and pick up SOE agents in occupied countries.[xlii]

The Camp today

Most of the Camp was acquired by Gerrards Cross Parish Council in the early 1950s “for preservation as an Ancient Monument and a Public Open Space for the rest and recreation of the Parishioners”.  Seventeen houses also have parts of the fortifications in their gardens.

Harebells in the Camp, July 2004

The Camp is a Scheduled Site, listed under the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Areas Act 1979.  No works of any kind affecting the site can be carried out without the prior consent of the Secretary of State for the Environment.  The Secretary of State is required to consult the Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission before giving any decision that would affect the site.  The County Field Archaeologist would also normally be notified. 

It is an offence for any person to use a metal detector on the site without the consent of the Secretary of State.  Digging on the Camp is not permitted, and neither is the lighting of fires.

For a less official take on the Camp go to The Modern Antiquarian website.  Apart from the present page, this is the most detailed discussion of the Camp on the Internet.

Finds, excavations and discoveries at the Camp

Various prehistoric items are supposed to have been found around the Camp over the years.  These include a number of metal objects, including a bronze pot, all now lost.  A few flint spearheads and a non-local grinding stone have also been found.[xliii]  There is reason to believe that some hillforts had a human sacrifice buried in the ramparts to ‘stabilise’ the fortification, but no evidence has yet been found to suggest that this happened in the case of the Camp.

The Camp has been excavated twice, once in summer 1924 and once in 1969.  The 1924 excavation, by Cyril Fox and L.C.G. Clarke, was significantly hindered by rain.  Overall it found little of interest.  Excavation of the ramparts suggested they were made ”solely of the gravel and sand removed from the ditch”, i.e. dump construction.[xlv]  If Fox and Clarke are correct in thinking that “there was nothing to indicate that the rampart had been added to since its original construction” then the fortification was created in a single phase.  A hearth of pebbles was found in the south-east corner, and a couple of pieces of pottery, “apparently pre-Roman”.  Another piece, “certainly pre-Roman, and probably Early Iron Age”, was found at Crab Hill.  Fox and Clarke concluded that “the fortress was never a settlement, but merely a camp of refuge”.  Because of the size of the defences they also rejected the possibility that the Camp was “merely an enclosure for cattle”.[xlvi] 

Ancient British ornaments as depicted in a Victorian history

book (1865)[xliv]

Fox & Clarke 1924 Map

Bulstrode Camp

Map courtesy John Gover

Between March and November 2002 a geophysical survey of the Camp was carried out by John Gover, with the permission of Gerrards Cross Parish Council.  Gover had problems with the dryness of the soil (a change from the 1924 and 1969 investigations!), and was further hindered by ridge and furrow left by farming.  However he did detect “a number of possible prehistoric anomalies”.  One of these was what might be a 60 by 15 metre (197 by 49 feet) Neolithic or Bronze Age long barrow in the south-west quadrant.

Bulstrode Camp

Resistivity Interpretation

Map courtesy John Gover

The other possible prehistoric anomalies were around the margins, mostly in the northern part of the Camp, especially the north-east quadrant.  Since these anomalies are circular and between 9 and 16 metres (29.5 and 52.5 feet) across it is possible that they are round houses.    Gover also found a D shaped enclosure containing a hut circle, possibly an early or mid-Iron Age farm enclosure, implying stock-keeping.

Gover found his possible round houses at the opposite end of the Camp from Fox and Clarke’s hearth.  Gover detected little here, but “this was also the zone of poorest resistivity response”.  Overall Gover concludes that the number of dwellings was limited and agrees with Fox and Clarke “that this camp was not heavily occupied”.  He also points out that the scarcity of artefacts “may mean that the date of neither the construction nor the occupation can be defined”.[xlviii]

Cllr. Malcolm Barrès-Baker, GXPC

March 2004

Bibliography

Robert Bewley – English Heritage Book of Prehistoric Settlements (Batsford/English Heritage, 1994)

Keith Branigan (ed.) – The Archaeology of the Chilterns from the Ice Age to the Norman Conquest (Chess Valley Archaeological and Historical Society, 1994)

Keith Branigan – The Catuvellauni (Alan Sutton, 1985)

James Dyer – Discovering Prehistoric England (Shire, 1993)

James Dyer – Hillforts of England and Wales (Shire, 1992)

G.C. Edmonds – A History of Chalfont St Peter & Gerrards Cross with

A.M. Baker – The History of Bulstrode (Colin Smythe, 2003)

Cyril Fox and L.C.G. Clarke – Excavations in Bulstrode Camp in Records of Bucks Vol. 11 pp. 283-288

John Gover – Bulstrode ‘Iron Age’ Camp Gerrards Cross – A Site of Many Periods in Journal of the Chess Valley Archaeological and Historical Society, 2003

G.C. Guibert – Hill-fort Studies: Essays for A.H.A. Hogg (Leicester University Press, 1981)

D.W. Harding – Celts in Conflict: Hillfort Studies 1927-1977 (University of Edinburgh Department of Archaeology Occasional Paper No. 3, 1980)

D.W. Harding – Hillforts: Later Prehistoric Earthworks in Britain and Ireland (Academic Press, 1976)

A.H.A. Hogg – Hillforts of Britain (Hart Davis, MacGibbon, 1975)

George Lipscomb – The History and Antiquities of the County of Buckingham (John & William Robins, 1847)

E. Clive Rouse – The Antiquities of Gerrards Cross & District (1930)

Victoria County History: Buckinghamshire Vol. II (1908) pp. 24-25

Royal Commission on Historic Monuments (England): Buckinghamshire Vol. I (HMSO, 1912) p. 160