Frontispiece: Chilterns Conservation Board 'Beacons of the Past' project LiDAR data, processed to produce a false colour enhanced topographic image to highlight low relief trends and features.

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This much loved woodland [1] has a rich and ancient history. It lies within the administrative parish of Seer Green, bordering Coleshill and Chalfont St. Giles, is owned by Buckinghamshire County Council and leased to the Forestry Commission who manage it in conjunction with the Hodgemoor Riding Association [2]. It is one of the largest tracts of semi-natural broadleaved woodland remaining in the Buckinghamshire Chilterns and is designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest [3] by Natural England.

Woodland cover is widespread throughout the Chilterns. Much of this has not been disturbed by 'modern' intensive 19 th and 20 th century farming practices, and is designated by Natural England as ‘Ancient Woodland’ (i.e. woodland that has existed continuously since at least CE 1600) [4]. Such woodland areas have the potential to preserve a rich archaeological heritage.

Here we look at what has shaped that which lies hidden in plain sight within our local woods. To understand this, and the development of the landscape, we also need to understand something of the geology (see Section 2) that has provided the areas natural resources.

The Chilterns Conservation Boards (CCB) LiDAR [5, 6] data covering Hodgemoor Woods have revealed a hitherto unrecognised archaeological heritage (see Section 3), including a section of Roman Road, probable evidence of Late Iron Age / Romano-British settlement, enclosures, wood banks, earthworks of uncertain provenance, ridge and furrow ploughing, extraction activity, and the remains of building platforms.

Also evident in the LiDAR are ‘natural’ features, a consequence of the underlying deep ‘bedrock’ geology and the more geologically recent glacial and fluvial processes that have helped shape the surface topography. It is the interplay of the historical land management and resource exploitation with the geology that is considered here, in particular the origin of depressions on the present-day land surface.