page_title: Cholesbury Camp
section_title: Period of occupation
hierarchical_section_title: Cholesbury Camp / History of the fort / Period of occupation
caption_attribution_description: English: St Laurence's Church, Cholesbury
context_page_description: Cholesbury Camp is a large and well-preserved Iron Age hill fort on the northern edge of the village of Cholesbury in Buckinghamshire, England. It is roughly oval-shaped and covers an area, including ramparts, of 15 acres, and measures approximately 310 m north-east to south-west by 230 m north-west to south-east. The interior is a fairly level plateau which has been in agricultural use since the medieval period. The hill fort is now a scheduled ancient monument.
  The fort is of the multivallate 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 period between the 6th century BC and the Roman invasion of Britain 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 and until the early 20th century was known locally as "The Danish Camp" and incorrectly recorded as such on maps.
context_section_description: 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.
  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 slag. 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 fragments imported from the Eifel 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 pottery shards strongly indicated the hill fort was generally deserted from the time of the Roman occupation of Britain 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.
caption: St Lawrence Church, built within the ramparts of the fort
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