Surprise discovery of practice trenches at Ampthill recalls a Bedfordshire training camp

Archaeologists searching for the lost Tudor palace at Ampthill Great Park, in Bedfordshire some 45 miles north of London, have instead uncovered the practice trenches where local men were prepared for the Western Front.

The team from DigVentures expected geophysical scans near the castle ruins to reveal stables or a banqueting hall. What they found in trench one was First World War training works: timber-revetted sides, evidenced by rows of nails from the planking, and sandbags.

More unusual were five parallel wires, cut and repaired in shallow trenches of their own – most likely a feature for training signallers to mend communications lines under battle conditions, and to conceal cable against enemy ‘wire warfare’.

The trenches are the physical trace of the Bedfordshire Training Depot, established at Ampthill in 1914 by Herbrand Russell, 11th Duke of Bedford, in response to Lord Kitchener’s call for volunteers. The depot trained 2,235 infantrymen who joined under the voluntary system, before becoming No. 9 Command Depot, which treated wounded and convalescent soldiers between 1916 and 1919. The cost was heavy: four officers and 155 men of those trained had been killed by October 1916 alone.

A memorial cross still stands in the park, raised by the Duke to 707 men of the Bedfordshire Regiment who trained at Ampthill Camp and fell in the Great War.

DigVentures will publish a 3D model of the trenches. The dig ran from 6 to 18 June 2026.

Sources

• DigVentures, Ampthill project and excavation timeline: digventures.com/projects/ampthill 
• Tony Fisher, ‘Archaeologists’ surprise at uncovering WW1 trenches’, BBC News, Beds, Herts & Bucks
• Tommy’s Footprints Camp Diary series: tommysfootprints.wordpress.com
• WorldWar1Luton.com 
• Imperial War Museums, War Memorials Register, Ampthill Camp Memorial