Hastoe – Chalk Pits
The ground to either side of the footpath you are on is riddled with holes, small, medium, and large pits that look like craters. They were dug out of many years by local people in search of chalk, a fundamental characteristic of the Chilterns landscape.
Chalk is a soft white limestone made up of incredibly tiny calcareous shells – these are the remains of plankton that lived in massive abundance in the warm tropical seas that flowed over what is now Britain between 95 and 65 million years ago, during a period geologists call the Upper Cretaceous.
Chalk has been used by people for many reasons – some of them rather surprising, such as adding to foods for bulk and for whitening in toothpaste. The sort of chalk in this part of the Chilterns is occasionally suitable for building; chalk ‘clunch’ can be seen in some older buildings, and a special type of chalk in the northern parts of the Chilterns, called ‘Totternhoe Rag’, was even quarried to build parts of Windsor Castle!
These ‘rag-pits’ you are walking near were likely dug for either spreading chalk on fields to increase their nutrients (a process called marling) or for other industry, such as adding to clay for making bricks. It’s hard to date some chalk pits, but some in Buckinghamshire may go back to the Late Iron Age ( 300Bc-AD43). These at Hastoe are more likely 17th-19th century.
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This is one of four ‘Routes to the Past’ circular walks, made possible by The National Lottery Heritage Fund. You can find the other trails on the main Chilterns Interactive Map, under routes.
Each trail has four waymarkers with unique stories to tell – Find the other Hastoe trail markers and scan their stories at the locations shown here.
Chilterns Heritage and Archaeology Partnership
Plan your trip to the Chilterns!
