
Looking south towards the Packway with army traffic
Looking south towards the Packway with army traffic
Some features remain but the site is much disturbed
Bumps in the ground and an outer bank – Looking North
Robin Hood’s Ball Neolithic enclosure lies beyond this protective fence within the Salisbury Plain army training area. One of the banks can be seen traversing the photo in the middle distance.
The first object of our attention, near a clump of trees called ROBIN HOOD BALL, is one of those ancient circles which I have before mentioned and described.. This, like the generality of them, is placed on an elevated and commanding situation, but has this peculiarity, of having one circle within the other, with an entrance towards the north.
We have to regret the great injury these circles have sustained by the plough, as in their original state they must have been highly curious, and are the more remarkable, from representing a double circle.
On the north-west side of this work are some barrows, one of which had been opened before, but in exploring it our men turned out the fragments of burned bones and a singular whetstone. Lower down on the south are some other barrows; in one of which, was found a brass dart or arrow head. To the east is a long barrow.
From p82 of “The History of Ancient Wiltshire” by Sir Richard Colt Hoare, which can be seen on Wiltshire County Council’s website here:
wiltshire.gov.uk/community/gettextimage.php?id=2049
It sounds like the poor thing was being ploughed recently:
... the plowing up, in 1984, of a Neolithic settlement by Robin Hood’s Ball, not for pressing reasons of military imperative or national security but as preparation for the planting of kale to feed sport-shooters’ pheasants. Fortunately this unplanned catastrophe was put to good use by an intensive archaeological survey of the plowed zone, providing the first systematic information about the settlement.
(from Managing for Effective Archaeological Conservation: The Example of Salisbury Plain Military Training Area. By Roy Canham and Christopher Chippindale, in Journal of Field Archaeology, Vol. 15, No. 1 (Spring, 1988), pp. 53-65.)