Ritual Enclosures at Whitton Hill, Northumberland

Abstract

To the north of Milfield, Northumberland the A697 cuts through a cluster of ring-ditches centred at NT933347. Discovered during aerial survey by Professor N. McCord, these were included in Dr A. Harding's survey of the ritual henges and related monuments of the Milfield Basin (Harding 1981, 101). Subsequent aerial reconnaisance by Mr T. Gates has increased the number of visible ring-ditches to at least eleven and, of these, three types may be tentatively isolated (fig. 1). The smallest appears to have a diameter no greater than 3.5 m, but with a ditch some 2 m in width (3 examples); in the second type the ditch appears less than a metre in width, but enclosing a larger area estimated at between 9 and 20 m (3 examples). A single example (Site 1 below) lies outside these dimensions and it was this, together with an example from the second group, that was chosen for excavation in 1982 and 1983.