Whirlow Hall Farm: Sheffield’s Forgotten Henge?

Abstract

The prehistory of southern Yorkshire and the north east midlands is poorly understood in scholarship. Its Neolithic and Bronze Age in particularly rarely figure in wider discourses in Britain. This is partly due to its apparent dearth of monumental sites. This paper describes the re-discovery of a large circular enclosure first mapped in the 1970s and subsequently forgotten. Overlooking the city of Sheffield, it proves that the region was an integral part of that wider prehistoric world and not marginal to it. The enclosure, a possible ‘henge’, is not alone. South Yorkshire, with its diverse environments and prehistoric archaeology, should no longer be marginalised.