Ancient site looks safe from quarry diggers - Yorkshire Post
English Heritage wants 'Stonehenge of the North' preserved after claiming it is of archaeological importance
Brian Dooks
CONTROVERSIAL plans for sand and gravel quarrying near Thornborough Henges in North Yorkshire look set to founder as new research offers further evidence the ancient monument was aligned with the stars.
Councillors have been urged to turn down an application to quarry 112 acres of land on a site just over half a mile away from the henges at Ladybridge Farm, near Masham, amid claims they are of national importance.
Last year councillors deferred a decision on plans by Tarmac Northern to extract a further 2.2 million tonnes of minerals by extending the existing Nosterfield Quarry after English Heritage claimed that archaeological investigation of the site had been insufficient.
Further archaeological work has taken place which has confirmed that features from the Neolithic or Bronze Age period are confined to an area of slightly higher land in the south west part of the site.
The consultant archaeologists concluded that the findings did not meet "thresholds for national importance" and said they had limited potential and had been heavily compromised by farm ploughing.
But English Heritage takes a different view. It says that the report identified a clear relationship between prehistoric activity on Ladybridge Farm and a wider area it refers to as Thornborough Moor ? including the henges, which have been hailed by some as the "Stonehenge of the North".
English Heritage's letter to the county council stresses that the archaeological work, including the latest assessment, has identified a "swathe of nationally-important early prehistoric archaeology and activity" from the Nosterfield site into Ladybridge farm.
Its experts say that the Tarmac application "will have a clear and negative impact on nationally important archaeology". English Heritage wants the remains "preserved in situ".
Tarmac's specialist, Mike Griffiths, a former North Yorkshire County Archaeologist, has argued that they could be recorded prior to extraction of the sand and gravel within an agreed framework.
Informally, English Heritage recognised that the preservation of nationally-important remains through some form of legal agreement might be acceptable, but North Yorkshire County Council's environmental services director Mike Moore said said it had questioned how this might be done given the difference in approach between it and the applicant's archaeological consultants.
Quarrying is opposed by the Council for British Archaeology, the Yorkshire Archaeological Society and two action groups, the Friends of Thornborough Henges and Timewatch. Over 1,000 letters of objection and a petition signed by 9,680 people have been received. Eighty letters of support have been sent in by supporters of the quarry's 15 employees and 40 hauliers.
Mr Moore recommends Tuesday's planning committee refuses permission because the quarry would have an unacceptable impact.
Tarmac's estates manager Bob Nicholson said: "Our consultants and North Yorkshire County Council carried out separate assessments of the Ladybridge artefacts and agreed they were not of national importance."
English Heritage had pulled out of the assessment and failed to give evidence-based reasons backing its assertion that the archaeology was important.
brian.dooks@ypn.co.uk
Comment: Page 12.
Neolithic peoples looked to the stars
research examining the origins of Thornborough Henges has confirmed the Neolithic people who built the monument 5,000 years ago were astronomers.
Archaeologists have long known that early man's beliefs were heavily influenced by celestial bodies like the sun, which was the centrepiece of Stonehenge.
But experts believe the Thornborough site was deliberately orientated on the constellation of Orion and engineered to leave people feeling they were at the centre of the cosmos.
Jan Harding, senior lecturer in archaeology at Newcastle University, said there was evidence to believe that the sky was fundamental to the Neolithic way of life.
His colleague Glyn Goodrick, of the Museum of Antiquities at Newcastle University, has created a three-dimensional virtual reality model.
Over this was draped computer-generated images of the sky as it would have appeared in Neolithic times. The result is a virtual world in which it is possible to position yourself to consider the reconstructed view of the henges and the sky.
Dr Harding said the study provided insights into Neolithic religion and what it regarded as important.
"The same objects in the sky are being picked out as important for a period of around 1,500 years."
One of the earliest monuments, a giant elongated enclosure, about half of which has been destroyed by quarrying, was most likely built between 3,500BC and 3,000BC. This appears to have been deliberately orientated towards the midsummer solstice sunrise, to the east, and towards the setting of the three stars which make up the constellation of Orion's Belt, to the west.
This early monument was replaced after 3,000BC by the three circular earth enclosures or henges. All three henges are broken by a pair of entrances, all on a shared axis and aligned on the midwinter solstice sunrise. The entrances frame the rising of the star Sirius and the associated constellation of Orion's Belt.
Dr Harding explains: "Thornborough was a sacred landscape, a place of religious worship, and we should try to interpret these astronomical orientations within that context."
15 February 2006
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