Fortifications
Iron Age
The earliest fortifications in Buckinghamshire date to the Iron Age (c.700BC – 43
AD) and include Ivinghoe Beacon, Cholesbury and Church Hill, West Wycombe.
Famous Iron Age hillforts in the rest of Britain include Maiden Castle in Dorset
and Mam Tor in Derbyshire. Iron Age hillforts may not have always been built to
protect people and their possessions; they may have been used as seasonal
meeting places or for storage and distribution of goods and livestock. Iron Age
hillforts are also common in France and Germany. The Heuneberg in Germany is
one of the most spectacular examples of an Iron Age hillfort:
www.dhm.de/museen/heuneburg. One of the most famous in France is at Mont
Beuvray (www.bibracte.fr/).
Figure 1: Reconstruction of Ivinghoe Beacon
Roman period
There is no good evidence for any Roman forts in Buckinghamshire (the Roman
period being 43 – 410 AD). Many of the early forts were made with earth and
wood ramparts and then destroyed. More permanent stone forts were built on the
edges of the Empire, such as at Hadrian’s Wall (see www.hadrians-wall.org).
Compare Hadrian’s Wall with the German ‘Limes’ (pronounced leemays), the
northern limit of the Roman Empire on the continent (see www.limes-indeutschland.de). Your class could compare the World Heritage Sites of the
Roman frontier in Britain and Germany and the Great Wall of China. At the latter
site, earlier sections of wall were joined together around 220BC and work
continued on the wall up to the seventeenth century.
Fortifications
Saxon period
Saxon burhs were fortified towns (the Anglo-Saxon period, or early medieval
period as it is also known, being from 410 – 1066 AD). They are often denoted by
the place-name ending –bury. Aylesbury was a Saxon burh, and we know from
historic records that there were two burhs on the River Ouse at Buckingham.
Most burhs have gone on to become modern towns and so very little trace of the
earlier fortifications survive. Old Sarum in Wiltshire was a Saxon burh although
this was later built on with a medieval castle. Daw’s Castle in Somerset was not
built over but is eroding into the sea. You could get your pupils to look for sites on
the Internet of a similar date to find out what was being constructed in other
countries, for instance the Hagia Sophia was built in Byzantium (Istanbul) in 532537 AD; the Christian buildings in Ravenna were all built in the 5th and 6th
centuries AD; and the Mesoamerican city of Teotihuacan was at its zenith in the
5th and 6th centuries AD.
Figure 2: Buckingham church on top of the Saxon burh
Medieval period
The remains of medieval (1066-1539 AD) castles in Buckinghamshire are
earthen mounds called mottes, such as Bolebec Castle in Whitchurch or
Danesfield Camp in Great Hampden, or ringworks, like Desborough Castle in
High Wycombe. The castle keep, made of wood, was built on top of these mottes
and there was often a bailey or outer enclosure for the service buildings. Only
Bolebec Castle may have had a stone keep like some others in the UK. Some of
the castles in Buckinghamshire were built at the Norman Conquest, like the one
at the Manor House, Weston Turville, and others were built during the “Anarchy”
Fortifications
period in the twelfth century, when there were battles over the monarchy.
Bolebec Castle may have been built at this later period. Some of the most
famous castles in Britain include the Tower of London, which was one of the first
castles built by William the Conqueror. Most castles were built in the medieval
period, from 1066 to 1539, but there are a few older ones. Compare this and
other sites in Britain with World Heritage Sites such as Bahla Fort in Oman or
Lahore Fort in Pakistan.
Figure 3: Bolebec Castle in Whitchurch
Post-medieval period
There are no post-medieval (1540 onwards) fortified sites in Buckinghamshire.
Coastal areas of Britain have some later forts, or earlier forts that were converted
for use when Britain was at war, such as during the Civil War, the Napoleonic
Wars and the World Wars of the twentieth century. Fort Cumberland in
Portsmouth was constructed in the late eighteenth century to protect the town
against feared invasions from France. Cliffe Fort in Kent was first constructed in
the 1860s and was reused during the Second World War to protect the lower
Thames. British Colonies also had to be protected. Fort Charlotte in St Vincent
was built in 1806, another Napoleonic fort (www.svgtourism.com). Forts were
built at Volta and Greater Accra in Ghana from the fifteenth to the eighteenth
century as the Portuguese started to trade with Africa and are now a World
Heritage Site. In contrast, the World Heritage Site of Hwaeseong Fortress in the
Republic of Korea was built in the eighteenth century to guard a tomb.
www.buckscc.gov.uk/archaeology