Beckbury Camp, Hailes

Beckbury Camp is an Iron Age hillfort on the edge of the Cotswold scarp above Hailes, about 2.5 miles (4km) east-north-east of Winchcombe, looking down over the valley of the River Isbourne. The Cotswold Way runs past it, and in its corner stands a stone monument known as Cromwell's Seat. It is a scheduled monument.

History

Beckbury Camp is what Historic England calls a slight univallate hillfort: an enclosure on a hilltop defended by a single line of bank and ditch. Forts of this kind were built in the late Bronze Age and early Iron Age, about the eighth to the fifth centuries BC, and most were used for 150 to 200 years. They may have been stock pens, meeting places, refuges or settlements of roundhouses and grain stores; only about 150 are recorded nationally, so each one matters. The scheduling, which dates from 1927, records no excavation at Beckbury, so it will still hold buried evidence of the people who used it.

Cromwell's Seat

In the north-west corner, on the site of a spring, is a nineteenth-century limestone structure with alcoves, basins and a projecting slab, marked on maps as a monument. The story is that Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII's chief minister, watched Hailes Abbey burning in the valley below after it was dissolved in December 1539. Historic England and the walk leaflet both tell it as a story, not a fact, and the monument is about three centuries later than the event.

What to see

The camp is a roughly rectangular enclosure about 169m long and 131m wide. On the north and west the natural slope of the scarp does the work of a rampart; on the south and east, facing the level ground of the plateau, a bank up to 4m high runs with a buried ditch in front of it. A clump of trees on the skyline marks the camp from the valley. From the edge, the view runs down over Hailes and the Isbourne valley towards the Vale of Evesham.

Visiting

Beckbury Camp is on the Cotswold Way, open at all times and free, and reached only on foot. The monument is a short, steep climb through the trees from a waymarker post below it, and you come back the same way. Clear days give the longest views, and the bank is easiest to read in winter, when the grass is short.

Getting there

Most people walk up from Hailes. The Hailes and Beckbury Camp walk, a 3.5-mile (5.6km) circular walk from Hayles Fruit Farm, climbs the monks' track on the Cotswold Way to a waymarker beneath the camp. The walk leaflet gives a £2.50 parking charge at the farm (GL54 5PB), taken off what you spend in its shop or tearoom, but the farm's own site gives no fee, so ring 01242 602123 to check. The farm is open Tuesday to Sunday and closed on Mondays. The 606 bus between Cheltenham and Chipping Campden stops about a mile from the farm, Monday to Saturday only. The Cotswold Way itself passes the camp on its way between Stanway and Winchcombe. Our guide to the Cotswold Way from Wood Stanway to Winchcombe follows that stage.

Nearby

Below the camp are Hailes church, older than the abbey and painted inside, and the ruins of Hailes Abbey. Hayles Fruit Farm has a tearoom and farm shop at the end of the walk, and North Farmcote is a place to stay on the hill nearby. In Winchcombe, St Peter's Church and the River Isbourne are a short drive away.