The River Nene and Flag Fen Basin

The Welland data indicates that land pressure and control stretched up the river valley from the land holdings on the immediate Fen edge.

The evidence along the River Nene is much more conclusive: the activity around the Flag Fen basin is clearly better understood as part of an extended river system (Figure 10.3A).

The entire Nene river corridor is the focus for Bronze Age activity throughout the counties through which it passes. Near its start, there are signs of Late Bronze Age occupation and metal deposition on Borough Hill, Daventry (Jackson 1997) and below Wellingborough a coaxial field system was constructed at Stanwick. Further land boundaries were also dug to the immediate west of Peterborough, but the greatest concentration of land divisions occur on the fen edge. In reviewing this rich and growing seam of Bronze Age activity we look first at the work at Flag Fen, the benchmark for all Bronze Age landscape investigations in lowland England (Figure 10.3B).

Flag Fen was a breakthrough for Bronze Age studies. Here on one site are all the elements of intensified spiritual and economic endeavour characteristic of an emerging complex society.

Fascinating as that prehistory is, the saga of archaeological discovery at Flag Fen is equally of interest as it offers an insight into the changing national framework of excavation in Britain.

The Basin has been the subject of continuous archaeological inquiry since the end of the 19th century. Local antiquarian enthusiasts collected much of the earlier material. The principal threat then was in the expansion of small-scale privately owned gravel pits and over a period of 75 years many highly significant discoveries were made (Pryor 2001, 7). This slow pace of economic growth changed significantly in the late 1960’s when

Peterborough was designated as a new town.

The historic medieval city was to be transformed with a greatly expanded population, vast arterial roads and industrial zones. In the absence of policy planning rules to ensure commercial funding of archaeological investigation, the rich prehistory of the fen area was seriously at threat.

The Royal Commission for Historical Monuments in England (RCHME) undertook a special survey of the heritage threatened by the city expansion and, on publication (Taylor 1969), a Fengate rescue project was organised by the Nene Valley Research Committee. This piecemeal work was bolstered by political lobbying resulting eventually in a long term Royal Ontario Museum/

Department of the Environment Fengate project.

In effect this involved funding by a Canadian museum and monies dependent on the largesse of British central government. That state funding was not as of right and, in the absence of determined pressure from academics and the general public alike, there was no safeguard that the prehistory of the region would be examined.

The combined rescue and research ROM/DOE Fengate programme driven by Francis Pryor ran from 1971 to 1978. The programme resulted in the discovery of the second millennium BC organised landscape, the first of its kind in the British lowlands. Subsequent work at Fengate continued for a further four years without central funding, dependent again on dedicated teams reliant on the generosity of the landowners, visitor income and university training excavations (Pryor 2001, 7). The discovery in 1982 of the Flag Fen causeway, a kilometre-long timber post alignment which crosses the wetlands separating Fengate and Northey Island (Figure 10.3b), set off a chain of events resulting in a second English Heritage project in partnership with the Fenland Archaeological Trust.

Two extensive commissioned English Heritage projects might at first sight suggest that the Flag Fen project is complete but, as Pryor notes, commercial developer funded work is making its own significant contribution to unravelling third, second and first millennium BC developments in the Flag Fen Basin (2001, 6). In a review of recent research in Fengate (Evans and Pryor 2001; Evans and Pollard 2001) it becomes apparent that the initial fragments of the field system discovered at Flag Fen now appear as a tiny piece cropped from an infinitely larger fabric. The commercial work is providing greater detail of features within the

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Figure 10.3 A: River Nene sites. 1. Pode Hole Quarry. 2. Eyebury Quarry. 3. Eye Quarry. 4. Oxney Road.

5. Peterborough Prison. 6. The Broadlands. 7. Raunds. 8. Thrapston. 9. Dog Kennel Field. 10. Charlie’s Close Field. 11. Orton Longueville School. 12. Tower Works. 13. Boongate Roundabout. 14. Fengate Depot. 15. Third Drove 16. Storey’s Bar Road. 17. Padholme Road. 18. and 19. Newark Road. 20. Cats Water Co-Op site. 21. TK Packaging Plant. 22. Boroughby Garage. 23. Land off Vicarage Farm Road. 24. Flag Fen. 25. Northey Island.

26. Greenwheel Cycle Way. 27. King’s Dyke West, Whittlesey. 28. Bradley Fen. 29. Stonard Field. Site details in Table 10.2. B: Flag Fen post alignment and principal Fengate sites. Derived from Pryor 2001. Fig 1.4

Into the Fens 89 field grid, clarifying earlier findings, extending the

‘site’ and recording even more features of Neolithic and Early Bronze Age origin. The Fengate Basin Report includes a reassessment of the dating of the Storey’s Bar Road field system. Originally thought to be Late Neolithic, Evans and Pollard argue that its construction should now be placed in the early to mid second millennium BC. They maintain that the small and apparently weathered Grooved Ware sherds found in ditch fills, were residual (Evans and Pollard 2001, 25–26).

The commercial work reviewed in the Flag Fen Basin Report shows that finer detail is available for these structured landscapes. For example, at the Depot site, ditches with surviving upcast banks and cultural strata were still present and the use of micromorphology (now more widely available) also suggested the presence of tillage in those buried soils which were subsequently capped by a burnt spread during the Early Iron Age. This south Fengate site had a more obvious coaxial pattern than the main Fengate system and it appeared to be short lived; apparently replaced in part by a settlement compound in the Late Bronze Age/Early Iron Age transition (Evans and Pryor 2001, 19 and 24). Similarly, work at the Third Drove revealed more settlement structures and at the Tower Works, settlement may have included a longhouse similar to one discovered at Barleycroft on the Great Ouse River.

Developer-funded work has also provided more evidence of Neolithic and Early Bronze Age activity in the form of probable early Neolithic settlement at Boongate Roundabout (Evans and Pryor 2001, 32); Late Neolithic pit groupings at Third Drove site 0 (ibid. 30), TK Packaging Plant (ibid. 32) to add to those known at Storey’s Bar Road (ibid. 25); and a Neolithic structure at Cats Water Co-op site (Pryor 2001, 47) as well as earlier discoveries at Padholme Road (ibid. 11).

Despite the profusion of pit clusters, settlement spreads and mortuary enclosures, the Neolithic landscape appears to have been open and devoid of permanent field boundary features (Pryor 2001, 407). Even the parallel ditches at Vicarage Farm (Pryor 2001, fig 18.1) are better interpreted as flanking ditches to another funerary structure rather than a Neolithic droveway. The commercial work cited in the 2001 report also confirms the diminished level of Early Iron Age activity compared to the flurry of boundary construction characterising the Later Bronze Age.

As Pryor observes, there can be no final

definitive Flag Fen monograph and the pace of development has already overtaken the 2001 synopsis, just as this attempt will be buried by the continual flow of new site reports. These additional client reports (available since the work on the 2001 Flag Fen Basin report) are extending the Fengate ‘site’. They are also beginning to suggest that Beaker pits mark out the earliest boundaries. Beaker pits have been found at a number of pivotal or nodal points around Fengate. They may have been dug and filled as part of ceremonies associated with the marking out of farms or territories (Pryor 2000, 7). For example, Pryor notes their presence on either side of the Vicarage Farm Road, which suggests that lands to the north toward Eyebury formed a separate zone to the fields around Fengate (Pryor 2000, 7; Britchfield 2002, 32).

The northern zone includes Eyebury Quarry, which lies 1km SE of Eye and 4km NE of Fengate.

Here the Cambridge Archaeological Unit is involved in a phased excavation project, working in advance of aggregate extraction. In each phase of contract work to date they have discovered livelihood, particularly cattle. Certain aspects of the field design are noteworthy: the occurrence of 90m spacing between ditches (an interval also observed at Barleycroft on the Great Ouse) and the incorporation of large wells and drinking points (Gibson and White 1998, 4). The overall field layout seems to set it apart from the rigid axial alignment at Fengate, for a more fluid approach was followed, creating an overall curvilinear field system. This long arc enabled each land block to bend with the prevailing local topography.

So variability in ditch orientations means that some are pointing ENE – WSW and others NE 0 – SW. In phase one of the excavation, land block dimensions were observed to be 135m NE-SW and 70m NW – SE, similar to the Romano-British system which measured 135m N – S and 80m E – W (Patten 2002, 5). The dimensions of the Late Bronze Age rectilinear plots were also similar to those at Barleycroft where the enclosures were 125m × 75m to 130m × 80m (ibid. 11). Work to date has confirmed Late Bronze Age settlement but the team is surprised at the paucity of material culture despite the recording of 56 pits

pock-Land, Power and Prestige 90

marking the site. An impressive Late Bronze Age wooden bowl was retrieved from one well however – and it suggests that mainly organic yet, observed on site. McFadyen (2000) writing of the Phase II work at the quarry records that the creation of the coaxial land blocks, representing a new form of monumental architecture, preceded any habitation of that land. Settlement came later and the only roundhouse (structure 7) recorded in this phase of the project was located just by a small pit alignment; a class of monument normally associated with an early to mid 1st millennium BC date (McFadyen 2000, 9).

McFayden suggests that the alignment of the field system was not, as normally assumed, on prominent barrows, but on less conspicuous Collared Urn pits and upright timbers in postholes (ibid. 15). This is a view first proposed by Pryor at Fengate. It suggests that standing markers and cremation pits represent an earlier form of boundary (R. Bradley pers. comm.). The incorporation of orthostats (this time granite standing markers) in the Dartmoor Reaves suggests a similar link between coaxial field construction and the land plots preceding them.

Within the framework of the land blocks, deposition activity occurred, including the placement of a token human cremation together with skeletal remains (McFadyen 2000, 15; 40).

This ritualised behaviour has also been observed at Whittlesey and Site IV at Colne Fen, Earith.

Deposition at Eye was not confined to organic material, for in one pit a Late Bronze Age pin was found in association with a large piece of slag – possibly from the base of a furnace for iron smelting. Such deposits represent different ends of the spectrum surrounding the creation of metalwork.

There were two areas of well digging, features 334 and 346. In both areas larger wells were eventually replaced by what the excavator terms “bucket size aperture wells”. The grouping of F334 comprised a sequence of three larger wells, two of which functioned to extract clean drinking water. A wooden bowl cloven in two and a wooden stave from a very large barrel was recovered from a portion of one these wells where the sides had collapsed. The bowl, turned and

hand hollowed from alder was interpreted as a special deposition. It resembled a carinated form characteristic of Post Deverel-Rimbury pottery (see also Yarnton and Buckbean Pond). The third well in this group (F334) was different. Its uneven base suggests severe trampling or poaching by animals. In the second grouping of well digging (F346) a large well was replaced by two bucket wells. A barrel lid was recovered from the large well; suggesting the need to extract large volumes of fresh water (McFadyen 2000, 10).

Divided lands at Eyebury Quarry differed in character to those at Fengate. The Fengate fields were much smaller, resembling a compartmentalised patchwork in comparison to the larger blocks at Eye. In some respects they were similar, for they both incorporated three way gaps between the corners of enclosures and they both had droveways (McFadyen 2000, 13).

The ceramic assemblage at Eye also matches the predominance of Post Deverel-Rimbury plainware found at Langtoft, Flag Fen and particularly Welland Bank (ibid. 36).

Within 2km to the east of Eye lies Pode Hole Quarry, Thorney. This site was characterised by a series of intercutting pits and rectilinear ditches.

The field system could be dated as Early to Middle Bronze Age in origin (Network Archaeology 2002, 2). The teams here encountered a similar paucity of artefact finds to that encountered on the phased work at Eye.

Returning to Fengate, we can now direct our attention to the east, out along the post alignment on to a route which linked a string of interconnected islands: Northey to Whittlesey;

Whittlesey to Eastrea; and Eastrea to Eldernell (Malim 2001). Insights into the nature of land exploitation on the eastern dryland at Northey are essential in understanding the cultural context of sites around Peterborough (Pryor 2001, 74). By the 1970’s components of a Bronze Age landscape had already been recognised where the Fengate post alignments made their landfall on Northey (ibid. 74). It was apparent that the causeway route running from Northey through Whittlesey and on to the outer islands passed through zones of settlement and coaxial field systems. The route would have facilitated the further movement of people, produce and ideas, possibly extending a social corridor originating deep inland along the Nene valley.

Recording ahead of quarry working has confirmed the importance of settlement and land

Into the Fens 91

management. Near Moreton’s Leam (opposite Fengate) an unenclosed Late Bronze Age settlement had been established. One of the buildings at King’s Dyke West, produced evidence of episodic feasting where the remains of many butchered lambs had been buried in a cluster of pits. The ceramics there were dominated again by Post Deverel-Rimbury plainware, just as at Eye and Fengate. Thirty two pit features were scattered over the entire site including some evidence of token animal and human cremation (Knight 1999, 17). At Stonard Field nearby, the finds were even more impressive for this site was on the line of the fen causeway on a small land bridge linking Whittlesey with Northey.

This constrained location produced an intricate pattern of prehistoric use; – a wooden circle and henge which became the foci for subsequent burials and cremations; a place that attracted Early Bronze Age settlement and then the permanent features of post built roundhouses typical of Later Bronze Age occupation (Gibson and Knight 2002).

The Fengate Basin has always been full of

surprises. Spectacular as these two sites are on Whittlesey they are surpassed by the discovery of an elaborate field system with associated burnt mounds and metal deposition at Bradley Fen (Figure 10.4). Here on the fen edge the full complexity of Bronze Age land use is revealed.

Here was an ordered world of gridded space embellished by metalwork deposition (Knight 2000; Mark Knight cf.). Capped by alluvium much of the metal is intact, placed in a recurrent pattern in relation to the burnt mounds and formal field boundaries. This convention is repeated on the Sussex Coastal Plain (Dunkin 2001).

Managed blocks of land therefore exist to the north, south and east of the original Fengate discovery. What about to the west? The discovery of an upland land division at New Prison, Peterborough has caused quite a stir. Middle Bronze Age boundaries were dug in a landscape marked by Neolithic and Early Bronze Age pits.

The Middle Bronze Age fields were accompanied by large wells (just as at Eye Quarry), burnt stone Figure 10.4 Bradley Fen. Data supplied by Mark Knight. A schematic plan of patterned metalwork deposition in relation to fields, burnt mounds and water holes. The discovery of designated work zones for farm production and “industry-scale” processing shows the full nature of regimented land management

Land, Power and Prestige 92

pits, hearths and a four post structure. There were also two watering holes, each was filled by a bottom layer of Early Bronze Age material and a Late Bronze Age topping, separated by edge-collapsed material. The field orientations lead to speculation that this was a pivotal point between two land blocks. It also raised the question as to whether the Fengate land clusters extended all the way up slope to the limestone ridge separating the Nene and Welland valleys, a distance of 5km (Knight 2002). The superimposition of regimented Middle Bronze Age field boundaries on a landscape occupied by pits containing Early Bronze Age deposits appears to fit a pattern in the Fenlands. It suggests that the rectilinear fields of the Later Bronze Age represent the formalisation of earlier land claims and agreed access points (Knight 2002; Chapman et al. 2005, 19).

Also west of Peterborough, at Orton Longueville School, a small-scale excavation revealed complex phases of land use from the late Neolithic to Roman times. This area is situated to the south of the Nene on the third terrace gravels, again like the Prison effectively an upland location at 16m OD. Casa-Hatton recorded some evidence of livestock management dated to the late Neolithic /Bronze Age period, suggested by a series of enclosures. Some were ditched, others were bounded by a combination of palisade stakes with double ditches. A portion of a droveway was also recorded (Casa-Hatton 2001).

Further west, a survey and excavation along the A605 Elton-Haddon bypass route in 1989 led to the discovery of a rectilinear Bronze Age field system. It had been constructed at right angles to a small tributary of the main river, which lay 1km to the west. An integrated droveway and corner entranceways featured in its design. It was located on the western end of the bypass route in the Elton estate at Dog Kennel and Charlie’s Close fields; an area of permanent pasture since the late 1790’s (French 1994).

The trail does not run cold here, for within a relatively short distance upstream a Late Bronze Age ringwork has been recorded at Thrapston (Hull 2000/1). This is a pattern already encountered on the River Colne, which flows down to the largest concentration of coaxial fields on the Thames at Heathrow. The Fengate Basin offers the closest parallel to the Heathrow socio-economic enclave, and the Nene, like the Colne, is an important feeder into a productive habitat.

Barrows and ring ditches are recorded on almost

every outcrop of gravel in the middle and lower reaches of the Nene valley, reflecting the importance of this waterway for prehistoric communities.

The floodplain around Wellingborough would have been an especially rich resource area, with settlement established on its well-drained terraces overlooking the lush water meadows bordering the river marshland (Gibson 1995). Early evidence for the domestic scale of animal husbandry comes from a barrow at Irthlingborough. This artefact rich Early Bronze Age grave was capped by a primary cairn almost entirely constructed from Bos crania fragments (Davis and Payne 1993). At least 185 skulls from prime beef animals marked this honouring to the dead. Intensive clearance of these floodplain zones occurred in the Bronze Age (Brown and Meadows 1997).

The gravel-rich terraces have long been the foci for aggregate extraction and concern over

The gravel-rich terraces have long been the foci for aggregate extraction and concern over