Friends of Thornborough – Speech at Thornborough Conference, Northallerton
George Chaplin, 27th March 2004.
Posted with permission. If other parties would like to share their presentations we would be very pleased to publish them here.
Friends of Thornborough
>From a small local base, Friends of Thornborough have grown to over 500
members worldwide, all of whom share one common purpose – the protection of
the Thornborough henges and their historic landscape. It is our belief that
the Thornborough henges are an INTERNATIONALLY significant monument and
their importance MUST be recognised.
Our wondrous heritage!
I’d like to spend a few minutes looking at the wider landscape. This should
serve to underline the importance of the area.
Thornborough may be impressive, but this is merely the most obvious survival
in what was once the largest religious landscape in Britain – we call it the
“Sacred Vale”.
It is called the Sacred Vale since religion appears to have been of primary
importance for much of its history.
You have seen how Thornborough’s first religious monument was the Cursus.
This is one of two ceremonial causeways within the Sacred Vale, the other
being at Scorton.
Together, these monuments provide a basis for a growing religious
significance of the area, they are two of only three cursus sites in the
north of England and they are amongst the largest in Britain.
Following the time of the cursus monuments, religious expression in the area
flourished with the creation of a widespread configuration of very large
monuments.
Thornborough, massive though the site is, was just one part of a much larger
plan.
Across the whole Vale, seven enormous “super” henges and a large stone row
were erected. This created the earliest and largest planned religious
landscape within the British Isles.
>From the plans of the henges in the Vale, six of the henges have almost
identical layout, this not only shows a significant amount of organisation
but also shows a long continuity of that social structure.
For such large henges, just having two of identical construction would be
significant – but six is completely unique!
As if this bout of super-henge cloning was not sufficient to underline the
importance of the place, our ancestors had another trick up their sleeve!
Take another look at the map.
The monuments have been built along two straight alignments. This is an
example of widespread social control that is without parallel in the British
Isles.
Everywhere else in Britain monuments were being constructed almost in a
piecemeal fashion. Here in Yorkshire we were building to the long distance
accuracy of the Roman’s!
Nowhere else in Britain matches this complex in size, accuracy and design.
It is so large and structured it flies in the face of our preconceptions of
our early ancestors – yet the evidence is clearly visible.
I don’t have time to go through the chronology of the Vale in detail, but
this is an area rich in archaeology from all periods, it presents a wealth
of so far untapped and often unloved heritage. Thornborough is the jewel in
the crown, there is a real prospect of this area becoming a new tourist
destination.
Just to add to our claim of Neolithic pre-eminence. It appears that almost
5,000 years after we were first infected with henge mania it struck again!
This time we had an urge to make up for the lack of megaliths – standing
stones and the likes.
There is the Druid’s Temple, only one of perhaps fifty stone structures
created in the 18th century to reflect Neolithic and Bronze Age design.
These were built within 5 miles of Thornborough but at a time when
Thornborough was thought to be Roman!
There are many more follies to be seen in Swinton Park, similar follies can
be found on the banks of the River Ure at Masham.
So you can see, not only do we have the largest concentration of henges in
Britain, we also have the largest concentration of megalithic follies!
The need to act.
However, there is a problem. This place is losing its heritage at a mind
boggling rate.
Remember our cursus monuments? 75% of these have been lost to quarries in
the last fifty years alone – this is a terrible rate of attrition.
Hutton Moor and Cana Barn Henges are crop marks. Nunwick is virtually a crop
mark.
Catterick henge was first cut in two by the Roman’s when they built Dere St
through it’s centre, then it was flattened for a racecourse and most
recently half has been quarried.
The only structures that remain upstanding to any degree are Devils Arrows
stone row at Boroughbridge, and the Thornborough henges.
But take another look at Thornborough and things are not well here either.
For the last fifty years or so a series of quarries have extracted gravel
from areas close to the henges. This has caused serious loss of the ritual
landscape of the henges.
And it’s about to get a lot worse.
So far much of the west and north of the site has been lost. It is not only
the setting – the land that surrounds the henges that we have lost, but also
a large section of the cursus has been destroyed. Also burial mounds and
many other features have been quarried and not recorded.
To understand exactly how much has been potentially lost, we can look at the
current quarry as an example of the archaeology of the area. This occupies
an area to the north of the henges.
Application for gravel extraction was granted in 1994, the site is operated
by Tarmac Northern Ltd. This was the first quarry granted after the
implementation of the UK Governments Planning Policy Guideline note PPG16.
Amongst other things PPG16 requires any archaeology destroyed as a result of
development to be recorded.
This particular requirement is useful but has problems as you will see. It
is useful in that for the first time we are able to understand the extent of
archaeology lost within a development.
We have a rough map of most of the major features found on the quarry, it
excludes recent finds such as the square barrows.
What you can see are these two areas of pits and hearths – these were the
settlements of people who came to visit the henges, there is an area where
axes were possibly ritually deposited, another area contains burials from
the Bronze Age to the Iron Age.
Overall the area shows a rich pattern of activity focussed on the henges.
This is likely to have been repeated in the areas now destroyed by old
quarry workings – and this may also be repeated in the areas not so far
touched by quarrying.
If we take Jan Harding’s field walking evidence it is possible to make an
educated guess at settlement locations, these appear in an oval pattern
surrounding the henges.
When we now look again at the areas so far quarried, we can see that quite a
number of these have already gone. Two settlements on the current quarry and
also note that another settlement probably sits on Ladybridge.
Clearly this is of great concern – large areas containing vital clues to the
function of the henges have already been lost.
Problems with quarries
You might ask, what is the problem with the current quarry?
Fundamentally, we believe that this sits within the ritual landscape of the
henges, that these are internationally important and that the clues left
behind by our ancestors should not be destroyed in the name of short term
gain.
If we have another look at PPG16 we can see it requires that archaeology of
national importance should be preserved in situ wherever possible, along
with it’s setting. It also warns the developer to take out insurance in case
such features are found. Clearly the intention is that newly discovered
archaeology of national importance should be preserved in situ.
We agree with the sentiments laid out here, the problem is that it only
seems to work at the initial planning stage.
The problems start when new archaeology is discovered that was not expected
as happened at the current quarry. It appears that on gravel beds it is very
difficult to identify archaeology without digging it up, the result was that
no archaeology was expected.
After work started on the quarry it became apparent that large areas of
archaeology were being discovered and was being destroyed.
The County Archaeologist was asked about the potential importance and
preservation in situ of the remains. The response was to the effect that
these were unlikely to be important enough, since to stop the quarrying
would entail North Yorkshire County Council paying Tarmac compensation for
profits lost.
This appeared at odds with earlier reassurances given with regard to PPG16.
After a number of discussions it is now clear that neither North Yorkshire
County Council nor English Heritage have the ability to ensure preservation
of nationally important features once planning permission has been granted.
Naturally, Tarmac being a business has taken advantage of this situation,
the result is no features on the current quarry have been preserved in situ.
This is a major problem. This is a unique place. The remains that surround
it are all part of a jigsaw that holds the key to a better understanding.
The archaeology is complex, difficult to understand and most importantly it
is the last of a very finite resource.
Developer driven “rescue” archaeology can never replace proper
investigation, if it could we would not spend so much on long term
investigative projects elsewhere. If we are to learn as much as we can we
need an environment of well funded, unhurried investigation.
A good example of the problems development driven archaeology pose can be
served by looking at the current quarry investigations.
The first area excavated by Tarmac contained the most Neolithic archaeology
found on the site. Seventy pits and thirteen hearths were found, containing
large amounts of pottery and flint. Yet because only a handful of features
were expected an extremely rapid excavation took place and a significant
proportion of the features were not properly excavated.
In the archaeologists own words – “we were running around, not quite chasing
our tails but under an enormous amount of pressure because the machine that
was operating was an enormous great earth mover”.
Roughly digging features is not likely to preserve evidence so fragile that
it can “crumble in your hand”. Whilst we can all agree that a developer
archaeologist is no less skilled than any other, the bottom line is that a
tender driven system tends to deliver lowest cost not highest quality.
This is just an example, remember the features we are looking at are fragile
and scarce, machining off the topsoil, roughly digging pits and sieving the
soil for evidence are features of developer driven archaeology that are just
not conducive to maximising the evidence available given the types of
features we have here.
This problem is compounded by the nature of quarrying itself.
Quarrying is different to most other types of development. Without control,
quarrying destroys all archaeology in its path – quarrying can often be to a
depth of 6m or more and it completely removes the setting.
Once quarried, entire areas of land are left archaeologically sterile – this
is not the same as a road or a building where the impact is relatively minor
and measures can be taken to preserve archaeology in the ground.
Once quarrying has completed we are left with huge lakes, the impact of this
on the heritage of the area is a real concern to local people.
In our view archaeology is onlyrned about archaeology, as the
landowner, surely it can insist upon a management regime that removes any
threat from ploughing?
Conclusion
In conclusion it is evident that PPG16 and the county council’s
implementation of it cannot ensure preservation in situ of archaeology on
this site ~ regardless of its importance. This makes the concept of a quarry
within the ritual landscape of the Thornborough Henges unacceptable.
This type of archaeology is wholly unsuited to a developer-funded excavation
however well meaning. As we have seen with the recent quarrying, the
archaeology here is extremely fragile and does not lend itself to a quick
and easy interpretation.
It is not acceptable to asset strip this place while there are other
options. This may well have been one of Britain’s most important spiritual
places – a henge capital if you like. We cannot allow this monumental
mistake to continue.
Thornborough Henges and its surrounding ritual landscape offer North
Yorkshire an archaeological and tourism resource of unique and unparalleled
potential. Their relative obscurity to date presents us with the unusual
opportunity to engineer new tourism and heritage attractions for the region
whilst fulfilling the needs of local people and businesses to retain thstigations may
well not identhilst enhancing their livelihood.
Allowing the quarrying of the area would create an archaeological desert
from a newly discovered oasis. We the Friends of Thornborough are firmly
opposed to this.
May I conclude by asking you to join our local community in opposing any
further quarrying in the Thornborough area.
Thank you.
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