Cana Henge (Saturday, 22.11.03)
This is no longer named on OS maps, but the 1854-56 map calls it Cana (see old-maps.co.uk). That map also describes it as a camp and calls the building to its SE Cana Barn.
Cana Barn seems an ideal place to park, and the footpath, jinking left then forward, takes you past a field of very high cabbages, then to a pea field. Somewhere in this pea field the henge must lie, but there are no indications, and the contour of the land, sloping gently away westwards, makes it an unlikely henge site (level ground being the norm).
The old map places it firmly in this field, though the Getmapping aerial photograph (see old-maps.co.uk) shows nothing. I can't help wondering if the henge was misplaced on the old map and should be further east, half in the field on the other side of the pathway. This would then place it on level ground.
Some way into the pea field is a slightly raised area, and I dowsed the energy flow as passing over this in a NNWSSE direction, with a width of 14 paces (about 7 yards). If the old map is right, this raised area is probably the henge's eastern bank. (But if my level-ground guess is right, it might be the western bank.)
The energy line seems to have a few effects on neighbouring vegetation. The hedge north of the pea field has a 7 yard gap exactly where the line goes. The cabbages in the field south of the pea field have a yard-wide no-growth pathway running through them which exactly coincides with the energy line.
All in all: no henge visible, but energy detectable - so that's half a result.
This henge monument is visible as earthworks and cropmarks on air photos. It appears to comprise an inner ditch circuit describing a near-circular enclosure approximately 100m in diameter. There are two opposed causewayed entrances facing near north and south. This circuit is irregular in width, varying between 4m and 10m and may have been cut in individual sections. Surrounding the ditch is an outer bank. Similar to the ditch it appears to compromise of several straight lengths of bank rather than a smooth curve, especially on the western side. The embanked circuit has an internal diameter of approximately 150m. The tone of the crop around the bank is quite different from the rest of the field and this is interpreted here as an indication of a shallow hollow. This feature is present on the inner and outer sides of the bank and around some of the bank terminals at the two entrances. A double ditched linear feature aligned between the two entrances is visible as a cropmark within the southern half of the henge. This may have marked an avenue leading to the centre of the monument, where slower ripening crops indicate a slight hollow. The southern edge of this monument is clipped by a modern field boundary, the henge banks appeared to survive as slight earthworks on 1971 air photos but no upstanding remains were apparent on the 2009 Google Earth air photos. (7-10)
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Posted by Chance
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