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Boudica's Last Stand

Victorian guidebooks told of a great slaughter of Britons inside these banks. The diggers who came later found something different.

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Illustration: Boudica's Last Stand
The legend
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Boudica's Last Stand

Eighty thousand dead, said the guidebooks. The soil disagrees.

See it clearly

What's there
Clear Iron Age banks and ditch in woodland
Legend from
Victorian legend of AD 61
Tone
Dark history
EarthworksRoyals

Before you go

The fort is in open forest and reachable on foot only; it is a scheduled monument, so do not disturb it. The City of London lists nearby forest car parks such as Jacks Hill off the B1393.

  • Ambresbury Banks, Epping Forest
  • Near B1393 Epping Road
  • The pin marks the spot.

Ambresbury Banks: the forest fort where Victorians swore Boudica fought her final battle against Rome.

Ambresbury Banks is an Iron Age hill fort hidden in Epping Forest. Victorian guidebooks claimed that Queen Boudica of the Iceni made her last stand against the Romans here in AD 61. They said 80,000 Britons died, and that afterwards the queen poisoned herself or drowned in the nearby Cobbins Brook. Excavations have found nothing to back this up. Local historian Georgina Green notes that Boudica probably never came near the place, and the fort seems to have been used on and off for centuries before and after the Roman invasion. A separate tale ties the name to the British war leader Ambrosius Aurelianus.

Sources

  1. Bell Common scene of Upshire M25 battle and Queen Boadicea's last stand, Epping Forest Guardian —
  2. Epping Forest Through the Ages, Georgina Green (PDF) —
  3. Ambresbury Banks, Wikipedia —
  4. Waltham Holy Cross: Introduction, Victoria County History of Essex vol 5, pp151-162 (British History Online) —
  5. Ambresbury Banks and Long Running, City of London —

Legends nearby

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