Blogs Heritage and Archaeology

Chalk, Cherries and Chairs was funded primarily by the National Lottery Heritage Fund and the HS2 Community and Environment Fund as well as a range of other match funders. The project was a five-year landscape partnership scheme designed to celebrate, restore and improve the environmental and cultural heritage of the Central Chilterns. Working with landowners, local authorities and different communities the project team ran projects to restore habitats, monitor vulnerable species, enhance cultural collections, increase public access and increase knowledge of this area.

One of the key aims of ‘The Mystery of Grim’s Ditch’ project was to introduce the monument to as many people as possible, and an obvious mechanism for this was to lead guided walks along the route of the monument where access allowed. Two different walks were organised and hosted by the original project manager at the start of the project, and a third was set up by BCAS in 2022. This third walk aimed to show how Grim’s Ditch is just the first of many examples of the human management of the landscape, and that the Chilterns may not be as ‘natural’ as first impressions suggest.

Four guided walks throughout 2023 introduced nearly 30 people to this historic landscape, but we didn’t want it to stop there! The team decided to create a self guided walk leaflet to allow as many people as possible the opportunity to follow the walk, and learn about the history of the route, as well as notable flora and fauna along the way. Creating a self guided leaflet was a new experience for the team, and it took quite a few edits to get it finished! We got there in the end and it is available for download on the Chilterns National Landscape website.

Throughout the process of leading the guided walk, and promoting the self guided walk, it did start to become very clear to the project team that there are lots of residents and interested people to whom the walk is not accessible. This may be because at 11km it is too long, or too uneven. It may be because you need a car to get to the starting point (or be prepared to walk from Princes Risborough). It may also be because the idea of carrying out such a walk is not something that people feel comfortable with, for whatever reason. It was very important to all involved that we reached as many people as possible and that accessibility must not be a barrier, and so we set out on our most ambitious element of the whole project, and decided to create a virtual walk, bringing the history, wildlife and atmosphere of this wonderful part of the country to as many people as possible irrespective of physical ability, location, confidence or other barrier.

With additional grant funding from DEFRA, we worked with Pan360 to bring the guided walk to life through an online virtual tour. Following the route of the original tour, 24 locations were chosen as drop in points, where a 360° panorama would allow the user to see all around them. Ambient sound adds atmosphere, and information points and panorama summaries explain the relevance of each location.

The information points and panorama summaries are available in both written and spoken English, or in British Sign Language. We would love to be able to offer the tour in more languages at some stage to further open up the tour to interested parties.

The virtual tour can be accessed via the Chilterns National Landscape website. pan3sixty.co.uk/virtual-tours/grims-ditch/360-virtual-tour.html#whiteleaf-woods-explore

Read more about the project in our blog post on the Grim’s Ditch geophysical surveys