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Coneybury Henge (site)

Henge

<b>Coneybury Henge (site)</b>Posted by ChanceImage © Chance - November 2008
Nearest Town:Wilton (11km S)
OS Ref (GB):   SU134416 / Sheet: 184
Latitude:51° 10' 22.5" N
Longitude:   1° 48' 29.89" W

Added by Rhiannon


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<b>Coneybury Henge (site)</b>Posted by Chance

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Details of Henge on Pastscape

A henge, surviving as a cropmark and initially recorded as a ploughed-out disc barrow. The monument was subject to surface collection, geophysical survey and excavation in 1980 as part of the Stonehenge Environs Project. The whole site slopes gently to the south, and the interior of the enclosure appears to have been cut back into the hillside in order to create a level interior platform. Excavation confirmed that the enclosing ditch, with a single entrance to the north east, had been accompanied by an external bank. Various internal features were excavated, comprising a few pits and postholes, numerous stakeholes, and an arc of postholes concentric to the inner edge of the enclosure ditch which may have represented a post-circle. Some of the internal features probably pre-dated enclosure construction, and pottery from the site suggests that activity spanned the Early Neolithic through to the Middle Bronze Age. At the entrance, the one ditch terminal to be excavated contained a large, apparently cumulative deposit, including a substantial quantity of cattle bones and lithic material indicative of carcase preparation and cooking associated with Beaker pottery. Bones of a white-tailed sea eagle were found elsehwere in the ditch. An Early Neolithic pit containing a considerable quantity of deposited material was also found just outside the henge (see SU 14 SW 292).
Chance Posted by Chance
21st September 2012ce
Edited 23rd September 2012ce

Stonehenge, Woodhenge,... but what about Coneybury Henge? (sacred to rabbits?) It's less than a mile from Stonehenge itself. Ok, so it never had big stones with fancy lintels. But it sounds intriguing.

Julian Richards excavated the site on Coneybury Hill in 1980. I'm afraid it's been ploughed so flat you wouldn't be able to tell where it is without one of those geophysics machines. But if you're driving up the A303 and reach the band of trees with the New King Barrows - well, it was into the next field to the south of the road there and was probably intervisible with whatever was going on at (the probably contemporary) early Stonehenge.

Richards found a c50m diameter ditch, which would have been a not inconsiderable 10ft deep, and which would have been surrounded by a bank. There was an entrance at the NE side, as the entrance is at Stonehenge.

A ring of small post holes circled the inside area(possibly 56, the same number as the Aubrey holes at Stonehenge) - and weirdest, within the circle were tiny holes which were the result of hundreds of little pointy-bottomed stakes being pushed into the ground.

(info mentioned in Pitts' 'Hengeworld')

If you look on the map the site is not so very far from the end of the avenue, where it apparently met the river. Though whether you could actually see it, or whether there's any relevance to that I know not.
Rhiannon Posted by Rhiannon
18th November 2004ce
Edited 21st December 2004ce