Much as the media likes to focus on the idea of ancient sites, individual places that can be revealed through excavation, the reality is less clear-cut. Archaeologists have long been aware that discrete ‘sites’ or ‘monuments’ are part of broader landscapes, elements of which may still exist. Sometimes, it is more helpful to think in these terms, and I have been promoting the idea of the ‘Baldock Bowl’ for more than ten years. The ‘Baldock Bowl’ is distinctive landform, part of a drainage channel that formed during the Anglian glaciation (474,000-424,000 years ago) that was later blocked to the south. When you are inside the Bowl, you have the impression of being a hollow completely surrounded by hills. This is an illusion, as it contains the springs of the River Ivel, which flows north to the River Ouse. The surrounding hills are not of any great height but the gaps through them have channelled communication for millennia.
There is an enormous density of Neolithic ‘sites’ in the Bowl, and there is little purpose in trying to define the limit of each. Instead, we can see a continuum of activity, with areas of more concentrated repetitive actions of different types and other areas that seem not to have been sufficiently well utilised to leave archaeological traces. The activity includes tracks, flint mines, burials, settlement, pits and religious monuments. The number of ‘sites’ makes it impractical to think of them as discrete units, and we have to take a holistic approach to understanding what was happening here between about 4000 and 2000 BC.
Archaeological knowledge of the area east of Letchworth Garden City, on the northwestern edge of the Baldock Bowl, began in 1957. Margaret McFarlane, then Assistant Curator of Letchworth Museum, discovered human remains in the footings for a kerb on the new Blackhorse Road. They proved to be part of a small cemetery dating from about AD 600, much later than the sites forming the Neolithic landscape. When work began in earnest on factory building in the following year, Miss McFarlane’s successor John Moss-Eccardt investigated large areas. By 1973, the final season of his work, he had investigated almost 100 ha of land. In 1988, an area to the north came up for development and is now Kristiansand Way and Talbot Way. Nine years later, from 1997 to 2000, an extension to the east end of Works Road, on the other side of the railway from these sites, revealed yet more archaeological remains. Finally, between 2010 and 2013, the Norton Community Archaeology Group investigated several sites in Hundred Acre Field, beyond the end of Blackhorse Road, uncovering further elements of the prehistoric landscape.
The earliest activity in the landscape lay close to the Ivel Springs, on the northern edge of Baldock and on the boundary of the historic parish of Norton. They formed the focus for the south-eastern end of a track at Nortonbury, although its course and destination to the north-west are unknown. Moss-Eccardt described the Nortonbury track as a cursus monument, consisting of parallel ditches and internal banks; at 7 m wide, it is much narrower than any other example of the type and is probably something else entirely. It does not seem to be a so-called ‘bank barrow’, as there is no evidence that the central area between the ditches ever held a mound. It seems instead to be a route along which people travelled to and from the springs but on a much narrower scale than the classic cursus type.
A short distance to the west, during the investigation of Norton henge in 2013, late Neolithic houses were found beneath its bank. They are horseshoe-shaped, with a windbreak on the east side of the door, the direction of the prevailing wind. Their plan is identical with those discovered by Mike Parker Pearson at Durrington Walls about five years earlier, although those at Norton do not have surviving floors. The evidence for them consists of trenches dug into the ground that once held upright overlapping timber planks. The walls they formed would probably have been covered in daub. The excavators found at least five such buildings, including one complete example. The builders of the henge bank carefully dismantled the structures before piling up the chalk, which fell into the trenches that had held the timbers. At Durrington Walls, these sorts of buildings are dated about 2600 BC, and the Stonehenge visitors’ centre boasts reconstructions of several, complete with internal fittings such as shelves.
At Norton, the houses are probably earlier than at Durrington Walls, as finds from the pre-henge activity include Peterborough ware type pottery and leaf-shaped arrowheads, Early to Middle Neolithic types. This may push the start of the activity back before 3000 BC. When the outer ditch of the henge was built, it cut through an earlier ditch, but only one short stretch could be examined, so we do not know if it was part of an enclosure containing the houses.
To the south, there are more houses at Works Road, although they consist of posthole constructions. It was challenging to produce plans of complete buildings, although at least one rectangular building is visible. The western part of the area investigated contains a mass of postholes, which show that building and rebuilding were happening here over a long time. They were effectively undatable, although associated with the same type of Middle Neolithic pottery and flintwork as at the pre-henge settlement.
At Blackhorse Road, a dense cluster of postholes in the southeastern part of a large D-shaped enclosure probably also represent many buildings. This area is complicated by a statement passed orally to the writer by a prominent academic (who shall remain nameless) that students digging there ‘invented’ postholes deliberately to confuse John Moss-Eccardt. The least said about this, the better!
What this evidence shows is that a large area across the eastern side of Letchworth Garden City saw an immense amount of activity in the centuries around 3000 BC. This early activity all seems to be domestic, apart from the ‘cursus’ at Nortonbury, where its general direction, leading away from the Ivel Springs in the opposite direction to the settlement suggests a different purpose. Given the later importance of the springs in what seem to be ritual activities, we may suspect something similar at this early date. It is also worth remarking that the ‘cursus’ is leading towards the edge of the Baldock Bowl. Did it lead people in from outside?
The henge was built in the centuries after 3000 BC, making it possibly as old as the first phase at Stonehenge (about 2960 BC). Its builders dug a ditch 60 m in diameter, 5 m across and about a metre deep, with steep sides and a flat base. The chalk taken from it was piled up inside, leaving a gap of about 3 m and creating a bank over 2 m high. Both bank and ditch had a gap facing exactly due east, towards the equinox sunrise on 21 March and 21 September. The location of the henge also meant that this line also crossed the Ivel springs. In the centre of the entranceway was a line of three irregularly shaped pits that were deliberately backfilled with clay. Inside the bank, people were setting small fires on which they burnt polished stone axes among other things, and smashed pottery.
Between about 2700 and 2500 BC, the henge saw major changes. The original bank was circular, as was the ditch outside it. This configuration is known as a ‘formative’ henge. By about 2500 BC, all newly built henges were oval, and Norton henge is the only formative type to change its shape to reflect the new fashion. The bank was reshaped, partly by cutting it back inside, opposite the entrance, and a new, shallow ditch dug inside it, while the outer ditch was left to silt up. A layer of chalk rubble was laid down as paving inside the inner ditch and through the entrance; we do not know how far this track led, but it perhaps took users down to the springs. At the centre of the henge, an oval pit contained the combined cremated remains of a new-born baby, a child and at least one adult.
Meanwhile, at Works Road, a smaller henge-like oval monument, conventionally referred to as ‘hengiform’, had a central grave. The ditch was little more than a gully, no more than 0.8 m wide and 0.45 m deep, defining an area about 10.5 m by 8,5 m, the long axis running west to east, with a gap at each end. Anna Rohnberger of the University of Reading kindly examined the skeleton that lay in a contracted position in the grave at its centre. She found that, based on the teeth, it was a child aged between 4 and 5½ years at the time of death. The backfill contained Neolithic flintwork.
Norton Henge was modified again, between about 2300 and 2000 BC. A massive post now stood close to the centre, while a low inner bank, made from material cleaned from the inner ditch, may have held a ring of smaller posts. A new pit cut through the paving in the entrance held the cremated remains of a child, while a square pit near the centre held a small collared urn. This style of pottery originated in the second half of the third millennium, and was often a container for cremated bone. At Norton, the urn was empty. Did this symbolise the ‘death’ of the henge?
At Works Road, a group of pits dates from this period. The largest cut through the southern part of the hengiform monument; it was an elongated lozenge shape, 9.5 m long, with a maximum width of 3.9 m and 2.12 m deep, perhaps extended several times. The lower fills were all chalk rubble that seems to have gone into the pit shortly after it was first dug. Their layering showed that they entered the pit from the northwest, the site of the hengiform. The chalk rubble contained struck flints and a piece of antler. Above this, there were natural silts, containing Neolithic pottery, animal bones, flints and a grinding stone with a semicircular pebble worn at one end. The grinding stone has a groove along its long axis, which the worn end of the pebble fits precisely. Nearby, another but much smaller pit contained Late Neolithic pottery, struck flint, and a second grinding stone with a cubic rubber (cushion stone), both carefully laid on the base of the pit with an antler pick placed on top of them.
What are we to make of these? Cushion stones are uncommon, but found across Europe, where they seem to be tools used in metal working. More specifically, they were used in making gold sheet, which was used to make jewellery, dress items and decorated wood and bone objects. The well-known Amesbury Archer, an exceptionally rich Early Bronze Age burial found near Stonehenge, had one in his grave. At Works Road, the stone and the grinders hint at early working of metal before the close of the third millennium BC. Several more grinding stones came from inside Norton henge. The careful placement of a cushion stone and grinder in a pit at Works Road, beneath an antler pick (perhaps even the very tool used to excavate the hole), suggests that they were an offering to the Earth.
The density of activity and the hints at wealth in the early centuries of metal working make this area in east Letchworth Garden City very important indeed for understanding the Late Neolithic/Chalcolithic transition in the region. We have more than a millennium of activity, and this account has barely scratched the surface of what was found. I haven’t mentioned the Blackhorse Road flint mines, with a puppy sacrifice at the bottom of each, containing pottery up to 1000 years old when they were filled in. I haven’t mentioned the Neolithic house on Clothall Common, surrounded by evidence for flint tool production. I haven’t mentioned the L-shaped ditch at Works Road, which replaced an earlier line of pits. Except that now I have!
Much of the activity in the area shows a concern with things underground. Dozens of enigmatic pits with no obvious practical function, the focus on the Ivel Springs, the careful and unusual burial of infants and children, perhaps hint at a belief in chthonic (underground) deities. At the same time, activities inside the henge were cut off from the landscape, perhaps hinting at a fascination with the sky and, at the very least, the sun. We should never think that Neolithic religion was focused on just one thing, such as ‘mother goddesses’. The evidence from east Letchworth Garden City shows that people were interested in earth, water, sky and, perhaps, even fire, the four elements of pre-modern Europe.
Written by Keith Fitzpatrick-Matthews
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