Over the decades our teams have patiently mapped thousands of archaeological sites from aerial photographs. Many sites are only visible from the air and to the eye of the skilled investigator, with little or no traces on the ground.
Here we unpack some of the hidden gems mapped by our flying archaeologists that you too can now virtually discover for yourselves with our Aerial Archaeology Mapping Explorer.
As featured in national and local press, we’ve recently made these interpretations of crop marks and other features available online for the first time. To whet your appetite, we’re looking at just some of the sites they’ve mapped and what they reveal about England’s past.
Farming
If you were asked to picture a typical traditional English farming landscape what would you think of? Perhaps the familiar patchwork quilt of small fields of crops and paddocks enclosed -depending on your locality- by hedges, fences or stone walls. Maybe this landscape would be studded with huddles of farmstead buildings clustered around a farmyard?
But our aerial mapping reveals that it hasn’t always looked like that. Take for example the traces of ‘ridge and furrow’ field systems seen across lowland England that have a corrugated or corduroy effect when seen from the air. These are remnants of a lost, more communal way of life: the results of generations of ordinary peasant families from the later Saxon period through to the end of the Middle Ages ploughing narrow strips of land allocated across big open, unenclosed fields. They farmed to survive and to support their lords, many being obliged by law to stay on the manors where they were born and work for part of the time on their Lord’s land.
As society and economics changed many land holdings were amalgamated and enclosed, or turned over to more profitable animal-rearing, especially sheep for wool.
A classic example of ridge and furrow is at Todenham, Gloucestershire.
Often below the ridge and furrow are traces of different, still more ancient field system such as the “brickwork” pattern effect of Iron Age and Romano-British agriculture. Within the fields are enclosures that may be cattle corrals or small settlement. Our team has mapped an example of these ‘brickwork’ fields near Edenthorpe, West Yorkshire, which is now partly built over with modern housing.
At Grassington in Yorkshire, aerial mapping lets us see past the ‘layer’ of traditional stone walls and field barns to expose a 100 hectare (nearly 250 acres) area of densely packed settlements, trackways and field systems dating from Roman to prehistoric times- right back to the Neolithic period at the end of the Stone Age.
Defence
Aerial mapping shows the whole sweep of defence or military history in England from roman sites along Hadrian’s wall to now overgrown places associated with the World Wars.
Hadrian’s Wall itself is, of course, a famous monument standing above ground and the most visible feature of the World Heritage Site named after it. But viewed from the air, we can see it was part of a wider network of Roman roads and temporary camps, like those first spotted in aerial photography from 1949 at White Moss, Cumbria. This bigger picture also enables us to see how the military sites fit in the wider landscape of settlements and fields.
Using the modern technique of lidar (light detection and ranging), we can ‘see beneath’ the vegetation that has overgrown sites such as the massive First World War training camps at Brocton and Rugeley in the Cannock Chase area of Staffordshire, revealing the foundations of the former camp buildings. The once-teeming complexes were designed to house up to 40,000 people preparing for the battlefields of the Western Front. Historians estimate that 500,000 soldiers trained here during the conflict, but the buildings were taken down after the war.
In addition to the camps housing the troops, there were practice areas, including two opposing lines of trenches.
Enigmatic ancient beliefs
Silbury Hill is a well-known prehistoric monument; it is the largest prehistoric mound in Europe.
What is less well-known is that that evidence mapped from the air, followed up by survey on the ground, has demonstrated that later a considerable Roman settlement grew up at its foot around 2500 years after the mound was built. This settlement is a typical roman ‘ladder’ pattern in plan was possibly a road station on the Road to Bath, but it may have also been a pilgrimage site centring on the already ancient ‘hill’ and a sacred spring.
Aerial mapping has also given us new evidence about henge monuments. Henges are circular or oval earthwork enclosures, dating from around 3000 BC to 2000 BC, that’s to say constructed during the Neolithic (New Stone Age) and early Bronze Age. Unlike defensive enclosures they have a ditch on the inside and a bank on the outside- so they not for keeping things out but for marking the space inside as special. Their exact function is still open to interpretation, but archaeologists generally think that these are sacred enclosures.
At Thornborough in North Yorkshire, there are no less than three henges close to each other. They had been partly damaged by past ploughing and their layout is less clear from ground level than other examples of such sites.
An aerial mapping project revealed new details about the layout and surroundings of all three henges, especially the northern henge, which is partly hidden by woodland. The project gave us a better overview of how other prehistoric sites such as former burial mounds (visible from the air as their outer ring-ditches) and mortuary enclosures relate to the henges. It also showed how the surrounding landscape has changed over time.
Is there ridge and furrow hiding where you walk your dog or took your lockdown exercise? Are there archaeological features near your favourite holiday destination?
Take a look at what aerial mapping has revealed near you or in other areas of England that interest you, and let us know your ‘best bits’ of discoveries from the Aerial Mapping Explorer in the comments section.
Further reading
- Amazing Aerial Images of England’s Maritime Heritage
- Britain’s Home Front: 9 Remarkable Aerial Images That Reveal the Impact of World War One
- The Flying Archaeologist
Great post Robin! Many thanks from Art Culture Tourism based Nottingham.
Really interesting, my parents farm has a fridge & furrow field, or the ‘up and down field’ as it’s officially known as 🙂
Absolutely fascinating – off to explore the Aerial Map!
The prescience of shaped ‘howes’ in se Cumbria* often in near straight lines in what would have been woodland makes me wonder if they were secret signalling lines.
* eg between Castle Howe at J38 and Castle Howe at Shap Wells Hotel some 5miles north are the rough pyramid shapes at Rampshowe and Buskethowe . – busket = basket?
Hi Robin. You have referenced Edenthorpe on this blog regarding historical sites from the sky.
Edenthorpe is actually in South Yorkshire and not West Yorkshire. This area falls into the DN7 postcode in Doncaster. I hope this helps you keep. Kind Regards Danny.
In the last three years, our village has lost two large portions of our fantastic, well-defined and preserved rough and furrow from both early and late medieval periods. The Borough Council Principal Planner decided that because our little village had a corner shop it was sustainable and could support an immediate doubling in number of houses. We lost a large part of this extensive R+F system as well as the community feel by growing far too quickly.
During high summer there is the outline of a large building in one of our fields. It stands on the edge of an escarpment with amazing views. Locally it is rumoured to be a Roman villa. This is in the Vale of Belvoir, Nottinghamshire.
There is a great example of Ariel archeology in my area in a deserted medieval village called “Wharram Percy “ in North Yorkshire