Marden Henge and Hatfield Barrow.

Marden Henge (also known as the Hatfield Enclosure) is one of the five Late Neolithic (circa 2500 BC) Wessex ‘super henges’. It is also the most unusually shaped of the group, being more ovate than round, and incorporates the river Avon to complete the enclosure instead of the more usual bank and ditch. It encloses an area of 37 acres (15h), and also contains a number of interesting features – Hatfield Barrow in the north-east quarter, a large burial mound in the south-west quarter, and a circular timber structure just inside the northern entrance. Of these, it is Hatfield Barrow which has drawn most attention.

Though it is often compared with Silbury Hill, it was nowhere near the same scale, nor entirely similar in shape. Robert Speakman’s illustration from 1724 has the barrow culminating in a high dome, rather than the flat-top of Silbury. Indeed, it is not dissimilar to the type of ‘bumpkin’ hat often depicted in the pages of Punch magazine in the 19th century. Sir Richard Colt Hoare and William Cunnington, the antiquarians who excavated the site in 1807, have the height at 22.5 ft, which is still impressively large, though a veritable pimple when set against Silbury’s towering 120 ft. Many give an alternative height of nearer 50ft, a measurement gleaned from Gough’s 1806 edition of  Camden’s Britannia (more commonly known a Gough’s Camden). Though this work had originally appeared in 1586, it would seem that even in the roughest of winds, losing 30ft of mound in 221 years is somewhat unlikely. Once Colt Hoare and Cunnington had finished with the barrow, it was no more than an untidy heap, having collapsed after a disasterous hunt for an individual internment. Shortly after this a farmer cleared what remained (presumably filling the ditch) to provide himself and his family with a little more usable land. Still, the excavation wasn’t entirely fruitless – Colt Hoare and Cunnington report that

“the men frequently met with charred wood, animal bones of red deer, swine, and those of a large bird, as well as two small parcels of burned human bones. Upon the floor of the barrow, we found charred wood scattered over the part that we cleared, and in one place, where there were large quantities of charred wood, we picked up some small pieces of human burned bones. . .”

Which may not set the world alight in the same manner as a mass of context free Anglo-Saxon gold, but to the those interested in the Neolithic, the odd bit of carbon and bone along with some mouldering bird parts is always something of a treat.

The original Philip Crocker illustrations undertaken for Richard Colt Hoare.

Regardless of disagreements about height, the ditch surrounding the barrow is one of undeniably impressive proportions. In his 1810 publication Ancient Wiltshire,  Colt Hoare describes it as a ‘deep and wide ditch. . . which in winter is nearly full of water, although the soil consists of a greenish sand.’ Soil of a sandy composition should allow decent drainage – the fact that the ditch (though it’s tempting to use the word moat) remained full of water throughout the winter months is a probable indication of the water table being swollen by winter rain rather than being filled by it from above. The English Heritage geophysical survey shows the ditch in great clarity – their estimate of its size is 25 m across, and 105 m in diameter, with the remains of the barrow showing  as a comparatively small island in the centre.

Slightly larger than this, at an estimated 30m across, is the anomalous feature in the south-west quarter.  Described by the English Heritage site boards as a feature “perhaps unique in Neolithic Britain; it is a large circular depression 40m wide and a half a metre deep, containing a small, off centre platform. The depression is surrounded by a bank almost 90m in diameter and nearly 1m high.” It also mentions Colt Hoare and Cunnington’s investigation, which yielded “a few bits of pottery and a little charred wood, but no marks of internment.” Fortunately for us, Jim Leary’s team are excavating this feature again, paying close attention to two intriguing parallel lines which extend away from the bank.