Great and Little Kimble - Prehistoric Hillfort On Pulpit Hill

Prehistoric Hillfort On Pulpit Hill

This hillfort is in Pulpit Wood on the summit of Pulpit Hill in Great Kimble, about 3/4 of a mile south-east of the church. It is 813 feet (248 m) above ordnance datum. It has never been excavated and its precise date is unknown, though almost certainly built during the 1st millennium B.C. Hillforts are usually attributed to the Iron Age, but there are a series of hillforts at intervals along the Chiltern ridge and that at Ivinghoe Beacon, which is not far away, has been excavated and found to have been built in the late Bronze Age.

The Pulpit Hill fort follows the contours at the top of the hill and has an area of 0.9 hectares (2.2 acres). The boundary is roughly D-shaped (nearly square) with maximum internal dimensions of 104 by 98 metres (341 ft × 322 ft). There are still double ramparts and ditches on the NE and SE sides, but on the NW and SW sides, which face very steep slopes down the hill, the outer rampart is hardly apparent and there is no sign of an outer ditch. The builders seem to have relied on the steep natural slopes on these sides, though the original ditches may have been eroded away. The entrance is on the SE side, where the ground is level. The ramparts remain imposing after (probably) about 2,500 years. Although now mere banks of earth, they would originally been revetted with timber and boxed in, so that the faces would have been vertical.

The fort, though in a commanding location, was probably not primarily intended as a fortress in time of war. It is likely to have been a centre for storing agricultural produce and used to store grain and to enclose animals from farms in the district (perhaps as protection from cattle raids), as well as being a defensible site if and when the need arose. There is also evidence that hillforts were used for ritual activities, possibly for religious purposes connected with agriculture.