Inkpen is a village and civil parish in West Berkshire, 3.5 miles (5.6 km) southeast of Hungerford, most of the land of which is cultivated fields with scattered woodland once part of a former forest of Savernake.

The ice left the deposits of heavy clay soil found in Inkpen that give rise to the occasionally saturated lowland areas.

Only one artefact has been uncovered, to the west of the gibbet, but even this helps confirm the traditional view of small groups of Mesolithic people following established cyclic seasonal trails through the forested countryside, often along hilltops.

Intact pots by the Beaker People have been unearthed at the Hungerford end of Craven Road in Inkpen, opposite Colnbrook Copse, as well as on the Downs.

Early Beaker People flint tools have been found close to the old saw mills at the end of Folly Road, along with evidence that suggests they were manufactured nearby.

At the bottom of the hill, on Hungerford Road, leaving Inkpen, flooding in wet weather, still sometimes re-enacts the meanderings of this river through the fields to the northeast.

It seems likely that this fresh water attracted the beaker people to settle and live in their round houses there, using the fertile soil for crops and livestock grazing.

The West Berkshire Museum has a number of bone tools and a bronze knife found in Inkpen that date from this period.

In 1908 trenches dug at Sadler's Farm, the site of a ploughed-out barrow, revealed a large quantity of animal and some human bones, horns and some early or pre-Romano-British potsherds.

Walbury Camp was built, not only for the protection of the locals from attack by warring groups, but also in response to the increasing importance of the hilltop tracks for trade and the movement of livestock.

At the foot of Inkpen Beacon is, what some believe to be, the eastern end of the Wansdyke, a long ditch and bank or linear defensive earthwork, built sometime between 400 and 700.

Although its eastern end is generally thought to be just south of Marlborough, this small section is named "Wansdyke" on Inkpen's enclosure award map of 1733.

At its summit, 974 feet (297 m) above sea-level, is Walbury Camp Iron Age hill fort, the start of the Test Way and the Wayfarers Walk.