'Henge' at Hunstrete, Bath and North-East Somerset?
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assemblage 14 (2015): 12-24 A New ‘Henge’ at Hunstrete, Bath and North-East Somerset? by NICK CORCOS The identification of a historic fieldname at Hunstrete, near Marksbury in northern Somerset, has led directly to the discovery of a previously unknown circular feature, 70m in diameter, which geophysical survey has confirmed is almost certainly a Neolithic henge-type monument. The occurrence of the fieldname also made it possible clearly to identify the feature on modern satellite imagery, on which it had previously passed unnoticed and unreported. The background to the discovery is discussed, and the paper also stresses the crucial importance of the use of historical and linguistic evidence, in the form of fieldnames or so-called ‘minor’ place-names, for the discovery of archaeological sites. Keywords: Hunstrete, henge, Neolithic, Somerset, historic field-name, Old English, toponymic evidence Introduction sources, have to play in the identification of otherwise unrecorded archaeological sites This paper reports on the discovery of a (Corcos, u.d.). previously unknown field monument, surv- iving under certain conditions as a soil mark, immediately south of the hamlet of Hunstrete, Background in Bath and North-East Somerset District. At the time of writing (Autumn 2013), the feature In August 2012, Avon Archaeological Unit Ltd is completely undated; however, from what were commissioned to produce a commercial detail can be discerned in satellite imagery, its archaeological desk-based assessment relating morphological affinities at least appear to to a site about 800m south of the hamlet of place it firmly within that class of monument Hunstrete. The research for that commission, sometimes rather loosely described as and the production of the final report, were 'hengiform', if, indeed, it is not actually a undertaken by the present author. The area henge in the strictest modern definitions of lies in the south-west corner of the modern that term. I will return to this point again later civil parish of Marksbury, and is centred on on. NGR ST 65120 61623. It consists of two separate but adjacent parcels of land divided A central element of this discovery is the fact by the main A368 main road between that it stems directly from the identification of Chelwood and Marksbury, which runs north- a historic field-name which survived onto the west/south-east at this point (Figures 1 and 2). mid-19th century tithe map for Marksbury parish, in which Hunstrete lay. It proved Both parcels are irregular trapezoids in shape, possible to obtain an early 16th century with the larger, northern area containing spelling of this name which strongly reinforced 12.07ha, and the smaller plot, on the southern its historical and archaeological implications side of the main road, containing 5.21ha. They for the site, and the potential importance of occupy a small, level plateau, are currently which was completely vindicated by modern open farmland, and historically seem always to satellite imagery. Because Marksbury was, have been so. The land use both historically from before the Norman Conquest, a and at the present day is arable. possession of Glastonbury Abbey, it is very likely that even earlier spellings of the field- name survive among the vast archive of that institution, and an example from the early 14th Topography century, albeit somewhat problematic, is also presented here. Even the latter, however, The northern part of the site is effectively level, proves beyond doubt that the site was already, and represents the highest point of the small, by that date, subsumed within an open-field localised plateau on which it, and the fields of arable furlong. I hope that this paper will go which it is composed, sit. The highest point, at some way towards reinforcing the idea, 153m aOD, is found immediately outside the especially for prehistorians, of the absolutely extreme northern corner of the northern crucial role which field-names, as historical enclosure, which in fact represents the site’s Nick Corcos – [email protected] ©Corcos 2015 ©assemblage 2015 assemblage Figure 1 Location of the study area. Plans and maps based on the Ordnance Survey sheets are reproduced by the permission of Her Majesty’s Stationery Office. sharply to the north, north-west and east, so that the northern corner effectively represents a prominent bluff or headland pointing north, surrounded by steep slopes on three sides, except to the south. I will suggest later on that it is explicitly this aspect of the local topography which has given rise to the second element of the place-name Hunstrete. In that direction (ie south), the ground continues to all intents and purposes as level, for a distance of over 800m, before beginning thereafter to climb gently towards Farmborough. A closed contour of 155m aOD occurs about 800m north-west of that village, although im- mediately south of the site’s southern Figure 2 Site location plan and boundary of enclosure, a spot height of 172m aOD provides the site area. a landmark along the line of the ancient parish boundary in this south-west corner of Marksbury parish, between Marksbury to the northern boundary, around virtually the whole north, and Farmborough to the south. As for length of which the ground then falls away 13 assemblage the southern enclosure, while the area on its Historical Overview northern side, closest to main road, continues relatively level, the southern side of the field Marksbury appears always to have been a begins gradually to slope upwards to the south, member of the hundred of Keynsham (Thorn producing a gentle, north-facing gradient here. and Thorn 1980: 408-409, list and map of Somerset northern hundreds). It emerges into By and large, however, the overall effect of the the historical record as the subject of an Anglo- local topography is to provide a relatively flat, Saxon charter from the Glastonbury Abbey natural terrace, with Marksbury village occ- archive, which carries a purported date of 936. upying its north-eastern end, and running In Sawyer’s catalogue it is S431 (Sawyer 1968). north-east/south-west for a distance of about As with so many records of this type, there are 2km to Whidcombe Brake, immediately south- questions surrounding the charter’s exact west of the site’s southern enclosure. It is also provenance, date, and veracity, and these have important to note here that the feature which been authoritatively reviewed by Abrams is the main subject of this discussion lies close (1996: 166-167). Perhaps the most interesting to the lip of a scarp slope which drops away part of the charter, however, is the full set of sharply, although at only a moderate gradient, bounds, in Old English, which are attached immediately to its west; so that an observer thereto, and which give the outline of the standing on or close to the original earthwork estate probably as it was in either the would have enjoyed spectacular prospects in immediate pre-Conquest, or immediate post- that direction, towards the rather more vale- Conquest period. As is so often the case with like tract of country in which lies the village of later Anglo-Saxon charter boundary clauses, Chelwood, close by to the west. But the those of Marksbury are almost certainly later converse may not have been true, and a than the main body of the text itself, although traveller approaching from the west, going this is by no means to say that they do not eastwards, up the scarp slope along perhaps reflect the estate as it was in the first half of the roughly the line now occupied by the modern tenth century. A mention of a rabbit-warren A368 road, may well not have been aware of suggests that the bound in its surviving form is the feature's existence until they had breasted unlikely to be earlier than the 12th century the lip of the scarp, and were by then virtually (Costen 1983: 25).i on top of it. It is regrettable that the lack of LIDAR data for this area makes accurate Marksbury is one of those sets of Somerset viewshed analysis to and from the site, rather Anglo-Saxon charter bounds which were problematic, although of course digital terrain studied by G B Grundy in the mid-1930s modelling, based on more conventional (Grundy 1935). However, more recently, the elevation data, might well achieve the same text of the bound, along with others covering object (Figure 3) (see further below). neighbouring estates in the Bath area, has Figure 3 Contour plan showing circular feature and steort of the place-name 'Hundestert'. 14 assemblage been reassessed by Dr Michael Costen, who assessment at that date, 2½ hides were held has published a revised transcription based on by an unnamed thane as a separate manor, a re-examination of the sole surviving copy of and although this sub-holding is not identified the charter, of 14th century date, in the great by name, it is at least likely that it was cartulary of Glastonbury Abbey (Costen 1983: Hunstrete, a possibility first suggested by 25-27). Dr Costen has suggested that the Collinson (II, 1791: 426). The earliest historical bound of the late Anglo-Saxon estate followed reference to Hunstrete by name appears to be pretty much exactly the ancient ecclesiastical in a document dated 1130. This record parish boundary as shown on the Marksbury explicitly refers to Hunstrete as a ‘manor’, and tithe map of 1843 (SRO D/D/Rt/M/424); the place-name is given as Hundestert (Watkin indeed, this remained the parish boundary 1952: 551). The second element of this name until as late as 1933, when the eastern side of it can, it seems, only be Old English steort, ‘a tail was removed, and Stanton Prior was absorbed or tongue of land’ (Mills 2011: 524), and this into a new, and much larger civil parish of indeed perfectly describes the headland Marksbury (Youngs 1979: 1, 431, and 437).