A LiDAR Lens for the Ure henges: Thornborough to the Devil's Arrows

 

After the Wiltshire LiDAR Lens, I wanted to look at the other great henge landscape, in North Yorkshire. So there is now a second one, free and with no login: the LiDAR Lens for the Ure henges.

What it covers

It uses the Environment Agency's 1 m LiDAR composite terrain model for a strip about 19 km by 37 km (703 km²), from Scorton and Catterick in the north down to the Devil's Arrows at Boroughbridge. The sites include:

• the three Thornborough henges
• the Nunwick, Hutton Moor, Cana Barn and Sinderby henges
• the Devil's Arrows
• Catterick and the Scorton cursus

One to look at is Langthorpe, just north-west of the Devil's Arrows. YAAM has drawn attention to earthworks there as a possible "super-enclosure". Their age and purpose are unknown. I have marked the spot where I think it shows in the LiDAR: see the Langthorpe view and judge for yourself.

How to use it

A circular lens sits on the aerial photo. Drag it about and resize it to see the bare ground underneath, drawn as hillshade, slope, local relief, sky-view factor or red relief. Low sun and some vertical exaggeration bring out the faint banks and ditches.

Click "What’s here?" and then a spot. The panel gives plain measurements of the ground there and lists nearby recorded sites, with links to the records. It does not guess what a feature is. That is left to you.

Credits

• LiDAR: Environment Agency, Open Government Licence
• Recorded sites: Historic England open data (scheduled monuments, listed buildings, aerial investigation mapping), Open Government Licence
• Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors
• Historic maps: reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland, CC-BY

There is no North Yorkshire HER data in it. Instead, the "What’s here?" card links out to Heritage Gateway for the spot you clicked. Please respect landowners, and remember that scheduled monuments are protected by law.

The code is on GitHub if you would like to build one for your own patch. Comments and anything interesting you spot are welcome below.