Great Missenden; The Castle (The Gatehouse Record)

Also known as, or recorded in historical documents as;
Rook Wood

In the civil parish of Great Missenden.
In the historic county of Buckinghamshire.
Modern Authority of Buckinghamshire.
1974 county of Buckinghamshire.
Medieval County of Buckinghamshire.

OS Map Grid Reference: SP90870043
Latitude 51.69533° Longitude -0.68624°

Great Missenden; The Castle has been described as a probable Timber Castle.

There are earthwork remains.

This site is a scheduled monument protected by law.

Description

A nearly square enclosure of simple plan and doubtful origin, possibly a medieval manorial stronghold but owing to the levels, the ditches can never have held water. The defences at the strongest part consist of a rampart 11ft high and a ditch 7ft deep. The entrance is on the NE side with a causeway across the ditch. On the SW side is another entrance, probably modern. (RCHME) Pieces of cooking pots dated to C12 by G Dunning were found in and near a pit inside the earthwork, close to the SW entrance. (Cockburn) The Castle (name verified). A well engineered defensive earthwork consisting of a rampart and outer ditch, measuring overall c80.0m square with round corners but not of uniform construction. On the NE side is the original central causewayed entrance with the rampart and ditch on both sides inturned into it. Here the internal bank is c2.0m high and the ditch from the top of the bank to the base of the ditch is c3.0m high. On the NW and SE sides, the defences progressively reduce towards the SW where the internal bank is c0.5m high and from the bottom of ditch to the top of the bank is c1.5m high. Here a modern way cuts the work near a circular pit which mutilates the inner bank. There is no trace of structure in the internal area and no levelling or interruption of the natural SW slope is apparent. The size, good preservation and the only known finds suggest this is a Medieval work. (PastScape)

Sources of information, references and further reading

National Heritage List for England Scheduled Monument Number 1009539, Legacy Scheduled Monument Number 19060
Historic England (PastScape) Defra or Monument number(s) 346328.
County Historic Environment Record (or Sites and Monuments Record) number(s) 0017400000.

Books
- Salter, Mike, 2002, The Castles of The Thames Valley and The Chilterns (Malvern: Folly Publications) p. 35
  King, D.J.C., 1983, Castellarium Anglicanum (London: Kraus) Vol. 1 p. 29
  RCHME, 1912, An inventory of the historical monuments in Buckinghamshire Vol. 1 (south) p. 172-73 online copy
  Allcroft, A. Hadrian, 1908, Earthwork of England (London) p. 315-6 (plan) online copy
Periodical Articles
- Cockburn, R.W.T., 1934-39, Records of Buckinghamshire Vol. 13 p. 300

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It is an offence to disturb a Scheduled Monument without consent. It is a destruction of everyone's heritage to remove archaeological evidence from ANY site without proper recording and reporting.
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The information on this web page may be derived from information compiled by and/or copyright of Historic England, County Historic Environment Records and other individuals and organisations. It may also contain information licensed under the Open Government Licence. All the sources given should be consulted to identify the original copyright holder and permission obtained from them before use of the information on this site for commercial purposes.
The author and compiler of Gatehouse does not receive any income from the site and funds it himself. The information within this site is provided freely for educational purposes only.

The bibliography owes much to various bibliographies produced by John Kenyon for the Council for British Archaeology, the Castle Studies Group and others.

Suggestions for finding online and/or hard copies of bibliographical sources can be seen at this link.
Minor archaeological investigations, such as watching brief reports, and some other 'grey' literature is most likely to be held by H.E.R.s but is often poorly referenced and is unlikely to be recorded here, or elsewhere, but some suggestions can be found here.

The possible site or monument is represented on maps as a point location. This is a guide only. It should be noted that OS grid references defines an area, not a point location. In practice this means the actual center of the site or monument may often, but not always, be to the North East of the point shown. Locations derived from OS grid references and from latitude longitiude may differ by a small distance.
Further information on mapping and location can be seen at this link.

Please help to make this as useful a resource as possible by contacting Gatehouse if you see errors, can add information or have suggestions for improvements in functality and design.
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