Wiltshire and Swindon Sites and Monument Record Information

SMR Number

SU14SE101

Site Name

Woodhenge

Grid Ref

SU15064338

Parish

Durrington

Photographs

Images for Durrington (if available)

District

Salisbury

Site Type

Henge monument

Period

Neolithic

Scheduled Monument

SM10365

Finds

Ceramics; Worked flint; Worked stone; Environmental evidence; Worked antler; Worked animal bone;Animal bone;Charcoal or ashes

X Y Grid Ref

415060, 143380

Altitude

99.06 metres

Geology

Upper Chalk

Description

Late Neolithic to Early Bronze Age single entrance henge first identified as such from cropmarks on aerial photographs. Subsequently excavated in 1926. 1970 and again in 2006.

Details

A) Class I henge comprising broad ditch, berm, external bank with NE entrance, 6 concentric rings of postholes in interior and a child's grave off centre. B) Excavation in 1926-8, & 1970 produced grooved ware assemblage & C14 dates 1867+/-74, 1805+/-54bc. C) A geophysical survey conducted during 2004 located the northern entrance terminals of the Woodhenge ditch as broad positive anomalies 8m wide incorporating some more strongly magnetic ferrous responses probably linked with Maud Cunnington's excavation of the ditch terminals and causeway in the 1920s. A series of very weak and localised positive anomalies are present in the area of the entrance causeway across the ditch and gap in the bank. They may represent small pits associated with the henge entrance although they do not appear to agree with the positions of post-holes in the entrance area recorded in Cunnington's report. It is possible that these anomalies may be the artefacts of earlier excavations. D) Re-excavation of Maud Cunnington's 1926 excavation in 2005-6 revealed a group of three new stone holes to add to the two found by her. Whilst Cunnington discovered that Woodhenge's timbers were replaced by a smaller rectilinear arrangement of standing stones, the new discoveries reveal that there were two phases to this replacement in stone and the stones formed a three-sided 'cove' similar to that at Avebury. The first phase was an arc of at least four small stones open to the west; those stones were then removed and replaced by two, much larger, sarsen settings represented by stone-holes 'h' and 'I'. Excavation under the Woodhenge bank uncovered a tree throw hole into which had been deposited sherds of Carinated Bowl pottery dating to the beginning of the Neolithic 'c' period 4000-3800 BC. A Geoarchaeological study afforded the chance to sample the surviving palaeosol beneath the bank and immediately adjacent to the area investigated by Wainwright and Evans (1979). The buried soil profile beneath the bank is a very thin rendzina with variable presence/absence of a turf line. This soil evidence confirms the snail evidence of a long established grassland environment by the 3rd millenium BC.

World Heritage Site

Yes

Sources

A) Henge Monuments and Related Sites of Great Britain, p292 (in British Archaeological Reports 175) p302-4 1987 Harding, A F; Lee, G E

B) Woodhenge 1929 Cunnington, Maud

C) Woodhenge, p71-4 1979 Wainwright, Geoffrey

Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society Vol 38, p387-407 1972 R BURLEIGH

X) Archaeological Journal Vol 96, p193

X) Wiltshire Archaeological Magazine Vol 54, p454-5

X) Wiltshire Archaeological Magazine Vol 70-1, p133

X) Wiltshire Archaeological Magazine Vol 59, p62+63

X) Wiltshire Archaeological Magazine Vol 80, p 240(16)

X) Antiquity Vol 01, p92-5

X) Stonehenge and Its Environs, p18 1979 RCHME

X) Devizes Museum 1975.99 1975 Devizes Museum

X) Salisbury Museum 1985.194 1985 Salisbury Museum

X) Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society Vol 61, p137-156

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