Ivinghoe Beacon... - Buckinghamshire County Council

Ivinghoe Beacon...
land of the dead
How to get to Ivinghoe
By bus:
By road:
61 from Aylesbury/Tring/
Luton.
Walk up hill from the B489/
village
By road: B489 from the A41 between
Aylesbury and Watford or from the
A4146 between Hemel Hempstead
and Leighton Buzzard. Turn onto the
Beacon Road from the B489 just to
the north of Ivinghoe itself. Park in
the National Trust car park.
Turn right out of the car park to head towards the beacon
(1) and hillfort (2). At the highest point inside the hillfort
was a good place for a beacon. Beacons were set up to pass
news of an invasion when Britain was at war in the 17th
and 18th centuries. The beacon was moved to Ivinghoe
church. The hill seems to have been occupied from the Late
Bronze Age as pottery and metalwork from this date was
found in excavation in the 1960s. The ramparts were not
built until the Early Iron Age, however, and the settlement
was abandoned soon after. A street and some house
platforms were found in a survey to the north outside the
ramparts.
Oxford Archaeology
This map is reproduced from Ordnance Survey material with the permission of Ordnance Survey on behalf of the
Controller of Her Majesty’s Stationery Office © Crown copyright. Unauthorised reproduction infringes Crown copyright
and may lead to prosecution or civil proceedings. Buckinghamshire County Council Licence No. 100021529 2007.
Route Map of Ivinghoe
On your way you will see several round barrows,
which are also visible inside the hillfort (3). The
large mound in the north-west corner of the
hillfort is an Early Bronze Age burial mound.
There are others on the way back to the car
park. They pre-date the hillfort so it is interesting
that a settlement would be sited so close to
funerary monuments.
You can turn right out of the hillfort to walk
down the ridge of the hill to another round
barrow. From the hillfort, start back to the car
park but at the road go across for a short way on
a footpath on the other side. This crosses Late
Bronze Age or Early Iron Age cross-dykes and
hollow-ways of a possibly similar date (4).
This map is reproduced from Ordnance Survey material with the permission of Ordnance Survey on behalf of the
Controller of Her Majesty’s Stationery Office © Crown copyright. Unauthorised reproduction infringes Crown copyright
and may lead to prosecution or civil proceedings. Buckinghamshire County Council Licence No. 100021529 2007.
This part of Grim’s Ditch is not part of the main system but is a
similar monument, a set of paired linear banks and ditches that
seem to carve the landscape up into areas, perhaps for grazing. The
inhabitants of the hillfort did not seem to grow crops, but did keep
animals like cattle and sheep. Go back to the road, cross-over and
turn right to get back to the car park.
Produced for the County Archaeological Service, Buckinghamshire County Council,
County Hall, Aylesbury, HP20 1UY
For more information visit: http://ubp.buckscc.gov.uk
Information from: Articles in Records of Buckinghamshire 24, pp107-17 & 144-70 & 30,
pp123-55.
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