Latest News

BAS Buildings Group
27 July 2008

The Society is in the process of forming an interest group for those wanting to get involved in recording Buckinghamshire buildings. Commencing in September, a series of hands-on workshops will be held at Aylesbury with other sessions at outside venues around the county. If you are interested in joining these sessions (there are limited places) or are would be interested in getting involved with the groups’ subsequent activities, please contact the Society

Quarrendon chapel in the
nineteenth centuryA future for Quarrendon at last!
11 February 2008

The Society is delighted that Buckinghamshire County Council has decided to step in to ensure the future of this splendid site, an extensive scheduled ancient monument shortly to be surrounded by new housing and roads. The County is to set up a trust which will eventually take on management of the site for public benefit.

Many members will remember the Society’s longstanding concern that Quarrendon should be properly looked after once it becomes detached from the agricultural land it adjoins at present, but found little immediate support locally from the leader of Aylesbury Vale District Council, within whose area the site lies, who described it first as ‘a pile of old stones’ and more recently as ‘a load of old bricks’… The old stones and old bricks are the remains of the medieval chapel of St Peter’s, Quarrendon which stands roughly at the centre of an amazing, historically-rich landscape that includes: the holloways and house platforms of the deserted medieval village of Quarrendon, a moated site which probably enclosed the house of Sir Henry Lee - one of Queen Elizabeth 1st most favoured courtiers, banks and ditches which define the landscaped water-features of his garden, and finally, a well-preserved Tudor rabbit warren, from which there are open views towards Aylesbury town. The whole is described in detail by Paul Everson in Records of Bucks 41 (2001) and see ‘Projects’ this website.

There is little doubt that the open day at Quarrendon run by the Society in September 2006 with the help of many local organisations, when 500 people visited the normally inaccessible site during a single afternoon, helped raise local awareness of its importance.

An important first step has been taken but the proposed trust will need plenty of support in order to achieve its objectives of preserving the site, making it accessible and ensuring that its wildlife potential is fully realised for the benefit of all.

Flint knapper at Whiteleaf
open day 2007Now in print – the excavations at Whiteleaf and Gayhurst
11 February 2008

Reports on these two important sites are now in print in Part 2 of Records of Bucks Volume 47 (2007). Two volumes of Records in one year is unusual, but then so are these two sites!

Gill Hey describes Oxford Archaeology’s survey and excavations on Whiteleaf Hill. The best-known feature on the hill is the famous cross, recently restored by the County Council. Oxford Archaeology examined the broader landscape including - perhaps of most importance - the Neolithic barrow at the top of the cross, first excavated in the 1930s by Scott. The barrow, over 5,000 years old, proved to be the oldest visible man-made monument in the county. The new work ‘demonstrated a 500 year sequence of activity’ associated with the barrow which had been constructed within woodland. Beneath it had been lain a single male burial within a wooden mortuary structure. The form of the barrow has now been restored.
Of two other ‘barrows’ examined, one proved to be a natural knoll which had been exploited in the late Neolithic for flint knapping, and the other a mound which had supported a post-medieval windmill. Also investigated were an enigmatic later prehistoric cross-ridge dyke, crossed by the main path through the site but largely unnoticed by visitors to the hill, and First World War period practice-trenches dug by soldiers in training. Finally, and quite unexpectedly, a Roman-period votive leaf, hints that we still have things to learn about the history of Whiteleaf Hill.

Andy Chapman of Northamptonshire Archaeology describes quite a different prehistoric landscape at Gayhurst beside the Great Ouse in the north of the county. Here in advance of gravel extraction seven Bronze Age ring-ditches, three pit-alignments (enigmatic prehistoric boundary features) and three Iron Age enclosures were excavated. These sites had been discovered by aerial photography.

All of these are of interest but the earliest and most striking monuments proved to be a double ring-ditch enclosing several phases of round barrow construction. The barrow contained a sequence of five central burials. The first had lain within an oak-lined chamber; this was followed by a further inhumation burial and later by three cremation deposits, the last placed in a Collared urn. This sequence is itself most interesting, but what makes it unique is that ‘its construction was marked by the deposition of some 300 cattle skulls, spread across the gravel mound …the lack of butchery marks suggests that they may have formed a symbolic feast for the dead rather than an actual feast for the living.’ This represents an enormous expenditure of resources and makes one wonder about the wealth of the local community and the status of the individual buried here about 4,000 years ago.

All Society members will receive a copy of this volume. Non-members can obtain a copy from the Society for £16.50 including postage and packing