Monks Risborough - The Parish in Antiquity

The Parish in Antiquity

On Whiteleaf Hill, which extends above the hamlet of Whiteleaf to the top of the scarp at 813 ft (248 m), is an oval Neolithic barrow (National Grid SP 822040), which was first excavated by Sir Lindsay Scott between 1934 and 1939, when the work was interrupted by the Second World War and the excavator died before he had had an opportunity to publish more than interim notes on his findings. A fuller report was published from his notes in 1954. The site was re-excavated from 2002 to 2006 by Oxford Archaeology (assisted by the Princes Risborough Countryside Group) and their report was published in 2007.

There was a single burial within the barrow, a middle aged man between 5'6" and 5'9" in height, with a long and narrow skull (a type found in the Neolithic period), badly worn teeth and arthritic joints. The remains appeared to have been placed between two large vertical posts, 1.2 metres apart. Pottery shards and animal bones were found at the core of the mound and the excavators suggest that these came from ceremonial feasting when the mound was built.

After the re-excavation the soil was replaced, following Sir Lindsay Scott's plans and drawings, so that the appearance of the barrow now corresponds with that existing at the start of excavations in 1934.

Radio-carbon dating has shown that the death, the burial and the building of the mound probably all took place within the period 3,750-3,100 B.C., but at different times within that period. The ceremonial burial could have been 45–150 years after the death and the completion of the mound could be up to 200 years after that. Similar delays have been shown to have occurred at other sites.

The status of the individual and the actual nature of the events are unknown, but he must have been a man of significance in local society.

Two other supposed barrows were scheduled as Ancient Monuments but have now been shown by the same excavators not to be burial mounds. They are sited to the North of the oval barrow along the top of the hill. One is likely to have been the base of a windmill, probably in use for a relatively short time in the late 16th and early 17th century. The other is a natural mound, but many chipped flints were found there and it seems to have been a site where flints were obtained and partially worked (for finishing elsewhere) during the late neolithic period.

Just to the South of the oval barrow, crossing the path leading to the car park, another earthwork was investigated and was found to be a cross-ridge dyke about 140m long across the Southern end of the narrowest part of the ridge. Its date is uncertain, but the excavators considered that it might be a late Bronze Age boundary.

The ancient trackway known as the Icknield Way, which ran from the Wash to Wessex, passed through the parish. It here consisted of two separate tracks, the Upper Icknield Way and the Lower Icknield Way, supposedly for winter and summer use respectively, though Christopher Taylor suggests that the upper route follows the prehistoric track, while the lower route was a Roman road which followed the same general line but on flat land more suitable for Roman methods of road construction. The route of the Lower Icknield Way is now followed by the B4009, while the Upper Icknield Way is here still a muddy track, except where it passes through the hamlet of Whiteleaf

A section of the extensive earthwork known as Grim's Ditch crosses the parish much further South (Map square SP 8203). This is thought to be an Iron Age boundary dyke.