The Great Ouse

The Great Ouse snakes across much of the Midlands, passing by Milton Keynes and Bedford before draining out towards the Wash (Figure 10.5). We shall start with the last landfall before the great river heads seaward.

The Ouse watercourse, in terms of known Bronze Age fen and drainage patterns, flowed past and possibly around the islands of March and Chatteris. Evaluation and excavation work on these islands is adding to the known Late Bronze Age settlement and farming evidence.

March is the northernmost limit of raised ground alongside the old Ouse watercourse.

Prehistoric boundary ditches recorded at Northern Office, March may be Bronze Age in origin (Casa-Hatton and Macaulay 2001). Lithic assemblages recovered from the marsh margins also suggested Bronze Age activity (ibid. 3) and the parish of Chatteris had an armoury of Bronze Age metalwork (Cambridgeshire SMR records).

The individual pieces recovered include shields, spearheads, rapiers and axes. Settlement was recorded at Chatteris Parish Church and in Bridge Street. On the southern tip of the island opposite the confluence of the Ouse and existing fen a complex field system, ring ditch and barrow landscape with droveways suggested Bronze Age pastoralism. These structures were recorded in Figure 10.5 Great Ouse sites. 1. Bunyan’s Farm. 2. Octagon Farm. 3. Roxton Quarry. 4. Broom. 5. Little Paxton. 6. Sandy Lodge. 7. Huntington Road. 8. Thrapston Road. 9. Huntingdon Racecourse. 10. Diddington.

11. Offord Cluny. 12. St Anne’s Street, Godmanchester. 13. London Road, Godmanchester. 14. A14/A604 junction. 15. Cardinal Distribution Park. 16. Low Fen. 17. Barleycroft Paddocks. 18. Lowland, Over. 19. Colne Fen, Earith. 20. Chatteris Parish Church. 21. Northern Office, March. 22. Langwood Farm West. 23. Block Fen, Mepal. Site details in Table 10.3

Into the Fens 95

advance of gravel extraction at Block Fen Mepal.

A ring ditch on this site was found to post date an earlier field system (Hunn 1992).

Close by lies Colne Fen at Earith. On these first and second terrace gravels an enclosure has been discovered with associated Late Bronze Age settlement. The enclosure appeared to be the focus of a wider paddock/field system since several ditches radiated from the corners of this rectilinear structure. Late Bronze Age pottery was recovered from the upper fills of the ditches, so this compound might have been of Middle Bronze Age origin. Despite the relative abundance of Iron Age settlement to the east, the excavators retrieved no Iron Age material from their work which preceded the southern extension of the Earith Quarry (Regan 2001; Evans and Patten 2003).

The Barleycroft/Over investigations will eventually cover 700ha on both sides of the Ouse at the point where the fresh waters discharge into the peat fens and the Great Ouse flows towards Haddenham and Earith and past Chatteris. To date, a number of Later Bronze Age field system blocks have been recorded. Each follow different alignments, with ring-ditch monuments/barrows serving nodal points (Figure 10.6).

In scope and execution this land use was of a type analogous to pre-modern agricultural

communities. In style and scale it contrasted starkly with the impermanence of the Neolithic and Earlier Bronze Age (Evans and Knight 1997b, 63). The professional investigations at Barleycroft, in partnership with the aggregates enterprise, are providing one of the most important fenland sites to date. The field system lost its significance by the Early Iron Age. Like West Deeping, the demise of these land boundaries at Barleycroft/Over is not explained by flooding. Evidence that, once cut, the ditches were simply left to silt up brings into question the longevity of such prehistoric field systems. These land blocks did not show up in air photography surveys since alluvial deposits masked the features. These river-washed silts have ensured a high degree of preservation but at the same time hide the land boundaries from air reconnaissance. Again large area stripping proves its worth. Their discovery in association with house structures refutes again the once held view that Bronze Age occupation does not occur along the Great Ouse (Fox 1923, 62). To date the northern and southern extent of this land division has yet to be determined. What is certain is that the land structures suggest a seamed landscape, with different land blocks joined together to form an infinitely larger fabric. Those joins are focused on known areas of earlier monumental construction.

Radiocarbon determination dates the boundary Figure 10.6 The Barleycroft/Over Bronze Age landscapes. After Evans and Knight 2001, figure 8.2. Bronze Age field systems have been traced across more than 350ha on both sides of the river. Sealed by up to 0.75–1.5m of alluvium they generally lie below the maximum depth of aerial photographic detection. Among the highlights of the excavation has been the recovery of a longhouse set in a separate ditched compound

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constructions to the mid-later second millennium BC. Droveways are noticeably absent except in the south-easternmost portion of Barleycroft (Evans and Knight 2001, 85).

For Evans, the field landscape offers a new form of social arena. Grids now frame settlement whereas previously people gravitated toward the burial places of their ancestors. For Evans these regulated lands offer a residential framework for groups whose previous life had revolved around the veneration of the dead. The grid therefore becomes a new emblem for permanent living for people tied to their lands. We now have a designed space – an ordered world which sets it apart from everything that had gone before.

The Barleycroft and Over land blocks have produced one particularly interesting act of deposition; namely, the recovery from two adjacent pits of the apparent separated left and right sides of the skeleton from the same young horse. The skull, hindquarters and lower feet bones did not accompany this act of burial (Evans and Knight 1997a, 81).

The monumental scale of Barleycroft and Over – effectively appropriating the entire lands at the mouth of the Great Ouse – implies either co-ordination at a community level or an imposed act of regulation by centralised authority. The site had one novel element to add to this continuing debate; the discovery of a longhouse. For Evans and Knight this possibly reflects evidence of emergent power. It is a line of argument supported by the high degree of on-site weapon production (ibid. 91).

Upriver (but only just) of Barleycroft and Over lies Low Fen at Fen Drayton. Sand and gravel have been extracted here just west of the point where the river empties into the Fen.

Settlement was somewhat unstructured but part of a Later Bronze Age field system underlay a Middle /Late Iron Age enclosure structure. While Neolithic features and material were present, it is in the Bronze Age that the first organisation of the land was executed. Overlying the whole of this rich prehistoric palimpsest there was an intricate Romano-British system of land plots probably representing a portion of villa estate designated for either horticulture, orchards or a vineyard (Mortimer 1995).

The continued expansion of Godmanchester has revealed traces of Bronze Age land division despite the relatively small scale of excavations on the fringes of the town. At Cardinal Distribution Park, Late Bronze Age/Early Iron Age pits and

NE/SW and NW/SE ditches were sectioned in an area where air reconnaissance failed to detect any archaeological features (Murray 1998). Within a kilometre to the west of this area of light industrial development a further SW/NE prehistoric ditch was exposed in St Anne’s Lane which suggests that early landscapes are traceable around Godmanchester (Hinman 1998).

Work around Brampton and Huntingdon Racecourse suggests an earlier start for boundary construction. At Thrapston Road, Brampton probable Neolithic ditches were recorded ahead of housing development (Malim and Mitchell 1993). To the north over the Alconbury Brook at the racecourse a coaxial field system dating to the Early Bronze Age was laid out interspersed with evidence of occupation (Malim 2001, 15).

At the confluence of the Ivel and the Great Ouse lies Roxton Quarry. Ancient ploughsoils recorded on site were ascribed to the Early /Middle Bronze Age since they were overlain by ring ditches of Middle Bronze Age date and the team recorded elements of a Middle Bronze Age field system. The excavators also noted a large meander boundary effectively cutting off a zone of land on one bend of the Great Ouse (Kiberd 1995).

From this confluence the main river valley heads up to Bedford. Commercial work in Bedfordshire produces relatively few Bronze Age find spots except for activity directly along the Great Ouse and its feeder river, the Ivel. Work on the Bedford bypass, which skirts the town in a wide arc to the south, suggests two possible areas of Later Bronze Age field division in the form of rectilinear enclosures at Bunyan’s Farm and Octagon Farm. The evidence for land divisions is better if we head along the Ivel rather than proceed to Bedford. There is an important site at Broom Quarry on the Ivel close to Sandy Lodge, an early hillfort of Late Bronze Age date (Knight 1984). The work at Broom is a phased programme of excavation on the river gravel terraces in advance of a 10 year programme of quarrying which started in the mid 1990’s. The early phases concentrated on a sequence of Neolithic and Bronze Age monuments visible from the air as cropmarks. Phases 4, 5 and 6 looked at a largely blank landscape where no clear cropmark features were evident and no archaeological finds were known. The surprising discovery of a large-scale coaxial field system of Middle /Late Bronze Age date highlights the contribution of commercial work in investigating the wider landscape near to monuments of an earlier epoch. The work

Into the Fens 97 continues on this site and to date the coaxial

boundaries extend over more than 150ha on both riverbanks. This farming system comprises single and double ditches together with pit alignments.

Early work suggests a break in occupation during the Early Iron Age.

The Great Ouse is the focus for Bronze Age land appropriation as it approaches the Fenlands, having passed through much of the Midlands, which are devoid of such land divisions.