Houghton Regis
Maiden Bower
Places > Houghton Regis > Archaeology
Maiden Bower
This site may have originally been a Neolithic causewayed enclosure. A causewayed enclosure is a roughly circular or semi-circular enclosure enclosed by ditches interrupted in several places by a series of entrances (or causeways). Worthington George Smith, the Dunstable antiquarian, found pottery fragments and animal and human bones when one of the ditches was exposed by quarrying in the late nineteenth century. Causewayed enclosures may have been used for meetings, group celebrations or for disposing of the dead.
In the Iron Age a fort was built over the top of the Neolithic site. It enclosed 4.5 hectares.
During survey work in 1991 a substantial new enclosure was detected. This ran concentric to the Iron Age hillfort. Suggestions for the purpose of this structure included an earlier fort or part of the earlier causewayed enclosure.
Sources:
- Bedfordshire by James Dyer (Shire Publications, 1995)
- The archaeology of the Chilterns from the ice age to the Norman Conquest edited by Keith Branigan (Chess Valley Arch and Hist Soc., 1994)
- Recent fieldwork at Maiden Bower by Michael Hamilton and Joshua Pollard in Bedfordshire Archaeological Journal Vol. 21 p.10
Further Reading:
- Maiden Bower by James Dyer in Bedfordshire Magazine Vol. 7 p.320 (1961)
- Maiden Bower, Bedfordshire, interim report on survey work, October 1991 by Michael Hamilton and Joshua Pollard in Manshead Magazine Vol. 32 p. 2
- Maiden Bower near Dunstable by G.H. Davies in
Bedfordshire Archaeologist Vol. 1 p.98 (1956)
