History of Loughton - Prehistory

Prehistory

Loughton has a very long history of settlement. Standing on a strategic spur of high ground in Epping Forest is Loughton Camp, an Iron Age fort built about 500 BC. Loughton Camp is roughly oval, defended by a single earth rampart enclosing about 12 acres (49,000 m2). At one time, the Camp must have commanded a spectacular view down the Roding valley, but by 1872 it was covered by dense undergrowth and entirely forgotten. In that year it was re-discovered by a Mr B.H. Cowper, and excavations ten years later found Iron Age pottery within the ramparts. Camps like this were probably places of refuge and citadels rather than places to live.

Loughton Camp lies close to Ambresbury Banks, another Iron Age fortification (which is in Epping parish). Though the two forts were once thought to be sequential - Loughton Camp followed by Ambresbury - the current view is that they face each other across a watershed which was an ancient boundary line, later re-used as the boundary between Ongar and Waltham Hundreds. It is now believed that these two forts were in separate - and presumably sometimes hostile - territories, roughly equivalent to the medieval Hundreds of Ongar (Loughton Camp) and Ambresbury (Waltham). The forts may therefore have acted as very visible strategic positions, huge frontier markers, which defined the boundary between two territories.