Being part of a community is important for us and Aylesbury Quakers’ 2026 guided walk through the old town is an opportunity to get to know us and our meeting. All are Welcome.
Old Aylesbury lies within an Iron Age hillfort of which no trace now survives above ground. It is one of a dozen such forts across the county many of which still have ramparts surviving above ground. Our Meeting House sits just inside the Aylesbury fort where its infilled ditch crosses Rickford’s Hill.
Mike Farley, the former County archaeologist, will lead a gentle one-hour walk around the town describing its early history and regional significance. On account of the hillfort, he controversially claims that ‘Aylesbury is older than Oxford’!
Centuries later the construction of Akeman Street led to some Roman period occupation within the town but as archaeological investigations prior to construction of HS2 have shown a substantial settlement developed a little to the west.
In the Saxon period a minster church was constructed here and a substantial cemetery developed. The latter was later to disappear under medieval buildings as the town became a flourishing market town. Later during the Civil War Aylesbury developed into a fortified garrison town.
In the medieval period Buckinghamshire’s County Gaol had been established here within which many ‘heretical’ Quakers were later to be interned.