Monument record MBC47205 - Trackways, ditches and boundaries in Hengrove Wood, Aston Clinton

Trackways, ditches and boundaries of mixed dates are visible on remote sensing data as extant buildings/earthworks/levelled earthworks/cropmarks and was/were mapped as part of the Aylesbury Vale Aerial Investigation and Mapping project (EBC18604). Located in Hengrove Wood, Aston Clinton, and centred at SP 89711 08271. This area has been wooded for centuries, it was (part) cleared during World War I for timber for the trenches (p109), which is still visible on aerial photographs in the 1940s. The features mapped are a palimpsest of usage dating back to the late prehistoric. The Iron Age hillfort at Boddington Camp, on the southern edge of the project boundary, appears to be surrounded by a field system visible as low earthwork banks on lidar visualisations and these have been recorded separately (MBC46773). Medieval and/or post medieval chalk pits, and the trackways used to access them, can also be seen throughout the wooded area and these have been recorded separately, as have larger trackways and boundaries. This left a large number of features which were hard to describe individually and have been mapped as part of a single record because of the complex nature of their earthworks. There are ditches and banks which may be earlier boundaries or trackways, that have been cut and or partly obscured later earthworks and may be trackways leading to and from the many chalk pits recorded in the woodland, which lies on the northern edge of the Chilterns chalk escarpment, or later drainage ditches that have been obscured by natural movement and settlement of the soils and later land use. It is not possible to disentangle the features in the woodland using the sources available to, and the methods used by, this project and would need further investigation through survey and/or excavation. Modern land use is near complete woodland coverage in use as a country park managed by Forestry England. (1-5)