A Mystery Square in the Stonehenge Landscape

 

Lidar Lens view

About 650 m north-north-east of Stonehenge, just north of the Avenue, there is a square. On the modern Environment Agency lidar it is very obvious: a ditched enclosure about 60 m across, centred at SU 1254 4278, with its sides running close to the grid. So what is it? I don't know, and that's rather the point of this post. It's a little mystery.

Who saw it first?

The first sign I know of was in 2010, when Simon Banton posted a relit image of the early lidar on his blog with a box over this spot marked "What's this then?" That post is no longer online, and I'm grateful to Simon for kindly supplying me with a copy.

Simon Banton's 2010 relit image of the early lidar, "What's this then?" Image: Simon Banton, used with thanks.

What it isn't

I can't see it for certain on any of the early aerial photographs. That's perhaps not surprising, as it had been a cultivated, ploughed field.

The Wiltshire & Swindon HER has a record nearby (MWI79347) for a feature seen on lidar, but that is described as a circle about 140 m across, with a bank. Different shape, different size, so it isn't this.

Nor is it the wartime pillbox that shows on the 1943 USAAF aerial photographs (Currently offline). That stood about 230 m to the west-north-west, at SU 12320 42854.

And it doesn't show on the geophysics. The 2011 magnetometer survey covers the square fully, and there is nothing there (Darvill et al. 2013, Fig. 4B).

So what is it?

Why hasn't it been spotted before, when it's so plain on the lidar now? That's an open question. My best guess, and it is only a guess, is that because it's square rather than round it is more likely to be something agricultural, a sheep pen or fold or something similar, than anything ancient. If you know better, I'd love to hear.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Simon Banton for a copy of his 2010 blog post.

References

• Banton, S. 2010. 'I love LIDAR and PTM', Novacaster Community blog, 4 Oct 2010 (no longer online; copy kindly supplied by Simon Banton).
• Darvill, T., Lüth, F., Rassmann, K., Fischer, A. & Winkelmann, K. 2013. Stonehenge, Wiltshire, UK: high resolution geophysical surveys in the surrounding landscape, 2011. European Journal of Archaeology 16(1), 63–93. doi:10.1179/1461957112Y.0000000025
• US 7th Photographic Group, 24 Dec 1943, sortie LOC122 frames 1022 and 1050 
• Wiltshire & Swindon HER, MWI79347.
• Environment Agency LIDAR, Open Government Licence.