Celebrating four and a half years of Beacons of the Past Chilterns hillforts project

Of course, the jewel in the crown of BotP was the LiDAR survey. Largest of its kind in the UK, we created a resource that will continue to yield new discoveries for years to come. The Portal will be kept live and accessible for the next five years (Dec 2027) and from January 2023 raw data files will be available upon request (subject to some caveats).

What we discovered through the use of Citizen Science, by involving thousands of enthusiastic members of the public in our analysis of the LiDAR, was that the Chilterns is a vastly complex archaeological landscape with many exciting tales to tell. BotP has tried to stay focused on the Iron Age, but its safe to say that the entire history (and prehistory) of the region can be enriched by the wealth of evidence that the LiDAR has brought to light.

Some of this information finds its way to the fore on our suite of new interpretation panels and digital media, and some will be shared in two forthcoming publications. One of these is an edited volume of research articles conducted by some of the project volunteers and we are really excited by the quality of this work which will inform academics and enthusiasts alike and undoubtedly feed future work.

The second output will be aimed at an even wider audience, as a booklet on the hillforts of the Chilterns and the major related discoveries of the project. These are likely to be available in the Summer of 2023.

We have commissioned an Augmented Reality App that will bring the Seven Ways Plain hillfort at Burnham Beeches to life, across all three of the time periods that were influential in its development and use. This is an exciting new ways to make heritage and archaeology more accessible and appealing, and we hope to see more of this across Chilterns sites in the years to come.

We are proud to have been instrumental in the creation and provision of long term management plans for landowners and land managers of some of the hillforts in the project. With the help of Giles Carey, we supplied spatial data on new archaeological features to the relevant local authorities, so that these new discoveries can benefit from the protections that are in place during the planning and development process.

From dealing with dangerous trees at Cholesbury Camp, to designing ways to thwart fly tipping at Desborough Castle, and supporting partners like the National Trust to mitigate erosion damage at Ivinghoe beacon, the project has been instrumental in removing at least one site already from Historic England’s Heritage at Risk register.

Public outreach took a blow in 2020 with the onset of a series of lockdowns and restrictions related to the COVID 19 pandemic, but this did not affect the online engagement in the form of some wonderful workshops and mapathons hosted by Ed and the ongoing use of the portal, which skyrocketed (and crashed twice from overuse!) when I talked about our project on Countryfile.

One area of engagement that we found we really missed doing in the lockdown period was the Pop-up Prehistory activity. These events were always great fun for both the practitioners and attendees alike and thankfully we were able to fit one more in this spring. It’s something I hope we can still see occur around the Chilterns, and we’re looking at ways to make that happen.