Monument record 0632101001 - Taplow Hillfort: Late Bronze Age Ditch

Wessex Archaeology undertook archaeological evaluation of land at Taplow Court in advance of a Butsuma. In trenches 3 and 4 (to the north of the building footprint) two large ditches were found and thought to be post-medieval. In later excavations (see below) they were found to be Late Bronze Age and Early-Middle Iron Age. A number of post-holes were also found and were assigned a later prehistoric date. Later excavation refined this date to the Late Bronze Age (B4).
In advance of the construction of a new Chanting Hall, Oxford Archaeology were commissioned to undertake an area excavation. The burnt remains of an Iron Age rampart were found to have been built on top of an Late Bronze Age defensive ditch. The ditch had a v-shaped profile, was 6m wide and up to 2.6m deep. Part of a Late Bronze Age bi-partite bowl came from the lower fill. Analysis of silt within the ditch gave dates of 900 to 605 BC (B1).
Traces of a further substantial ditch over 1.5m deep were found to the east during a watching brief in 1999-2000 on service trenching. Subsequent trial trenching in April 2005 confirmed the presence of a second N-S Late Bronze Age hillfort ditch parallel to that found in the excavated area. The ditch also has a wide v-shaped profile, was 12m wide and 3.35m deep. 7 fills were identified, the lowest included a sherd of Late Bronze Age pottery and the uppermost fills included an early to middle Saxon rubbish deposit. A single Late Bronze Age subrectangular pit 1.15m X 0.8m and 0.6m deep with straight sides and flat base was found 3.45m to the west of the ditch. The pit contained 4 fills and included finds of pottery, flint and worked stone. See report for detail (B2).
There seems to have been an inner rampart to the west of the V-shaped ditch. Evidence of this comes from the examination of a soil layer that seems to have been protected by a rampart. There may have been a berm of about 1.8m to 2.2m between the edge of the ditch and the rampart, which could have been between 1.2 and 2.5m high. On the outer edge of the ditch there is a rough line of post-holes (1104) and charcoal from one of these gave an intrusive radiocarbon date (B3).