As some of you know, a planning application has been submitted for the construction of up to four houses immediately to the west of Thornborough Village. TAG is strongly opposed to this development on archaeological grounds. Here is our letter of objection, now submitted to North Yorkshire County Council:
Dear North Yorkshire County Council,
I write to you in my capacity as Chair of the Thornborough Archaeology Group to express our strong opposition to the planning application to build up to four houses on land west of Ferndale, Thornborough, North Yorkshire (Ref: ZB25/01537/OUT).
Our objection is based upon a detailed understanding of Thornborough’s remarkable archaeology and a concern for the setting of this internationally significant prehistoric landscape. The Thornborough Archaeology Group is a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to promoting and deepening our understanding of Thornborough and other associated archaeological sites through research, events and resources. I, myself, have a longstanding interest in Thornborough’s prehistory, after undertaking many years of archaeological fieldwork there and publishing a detailed monograph in 2013.
In the ‘Desk-Based Archaeological Assessment’ submitted by Prospect Archaeology in support of the application, it is argued that the development would not impact upon any of the landscape’s known Neolithic and Bronze Age monuments (4.2.1). More specifically, it contends that the cursus, a major monument built in the fourth millennium BC, does not extend through the proposed area of development, but is most likely to have terminated beforehand “at the slight rise in the ground at the point where the continuity of the cursus cropmark ends” (5.1.4).
Unfortunately, this archaeological assessment omits mention of the evidence that does exist about the course of this monument. Most notably, it makes no reference to a paper published in 1960 by the excavator of the cursus (Vatcher, F. 1960. ‘Thornborough Cursus, Yorks.’, Yorkshire Archaeological Journal 158, 425-45). Vatcher, a highly experienced archaeologist working for the then Ancient Monuments Department of the Ministry of Works, leaves us in no doubt that the cursus does in fact continue into the area of development. Her Figure 2, “showing the present known extent of cursus”, was based on both aerial photographs and her own ground plot, the latter produced by walking the visible cropmark of the two flanking ditches in the early summer of 1958. As she notes, the cursus “crossed the greater part of two fields and reached the boundary of the first cottage in Thornborough, by which time the distance between both ditches had narrowed slightly (Vatcher 1960, 173). This residential boundary remains today, so Vatcher’s direct field observation, along with earlier aerial photographs, clearly place the monument within the area of this planning application.
Other details are cited in the archaeological assessment to support the conclusion that the entirety of the cursus lies to the east of the proposed area of development. It states, “Projection of the alignment of the cursus would require a change of direction for it to pass directly through the application site….The two ditches provisionally identified as the cursus ditches are less than 40m apart, compared to the 50m along the majority of the cursus” (5.1.3). This implies that the slight shift in its course, along with variations in its width, are atypical for cursuses, and that therefore, the observed cropmarks in the planning area cannot be part of the Thornborough cursus. Yet cursuses are well known for shifting alignment and varying in their breadth, as is clearly demonstrable by the other recording lengths of the Thornborough cursus itself. It shows the monument bending along its course and being between 44m and 66m across (see Vatcher 1960, 178). Archaeologists talk often of cursuses being built in sections.
The archaeological assessment further speculates about the course of the cursus. In contrast to what is stated elsewhere in the report, it proposes that if the cursus did indeed continue eastward towards the village of Thornborough, then it does so to the north of the proposed development (5.1.3). This interpretation similarly ignores the evidence cited by Vatcher, and seems to be based principally upon the cropmark of a possible ditch shown in an aerial photograph from 1958 and reproduced in the assessment as Plate 2. It is stated that its interpretation “as a former field boundary is not based on any historical evidence seen in this assessment” (5.1.3; see also 5.1.2), yet the location of this cropmark does approximately accord with the dashed line of an allotment boundary shown in “A Plan of Thornborough Moor and Open-Fields describing the Allotments as made” by John Mowbray in 1796. This map is actually reproduced in the assessment as Figure 5.
The Thornborough Archaeology Group therefore believes that the cursus monument does fall within the planning area―and given this, we strongly object to a development that would destroy part of a major monument. We also believe that the proposed development would seriously detract from the setting of Thornborough’s archaeology. Cursuses are known nationally to have attracted burial sites, and indeed there may have been a direct connection between their function and these other nearby monuments. The point can be made at Thornborough, for more-or-less opposite the proposed area of development is an oval-shaped enclosure thought to be broadly contemporary with the cursus. The archaeological assessment appears to refer to this site, but confuses it with a triple-ditched round barrow that lies a little further to the south (4.3.7). Both sites have actually been excavated, and contrary to the assessment, which states they are undated, they are broadly contemporary to the cursus. Hence, it is clear that the development would impact greatly upon the wider appreciation of the cursus’s setting, and is thus an unwelcome addition to a prehistoric landscape whose preservation and conservation should be considered both a regional and national priority.
We would make one further observation about the desk-based archaeological assessment. It refers to the results of a magnetometry survey, presumably completed as part of the application, to further contend that the cursus does not pass through the planning area. Unfortunately, these results are reproduced in an unhelpfully small illustration (Figure 2B), and to make matters worse, are of poor unprocessed quality, as is evident if you compare it to an earlier and fully processed magnetometry survey of the central henge reproduced as Figure 2A. This, along with the inadequate description and discussion of the survey, makes it impossible to consider the implications of the results. A full and detailed account should have been submitted as part of the archaeological assessment.
Kind regards,
Dr Jan Harding
Chair, on Behalf of the Thornborough Archaeology Group
Thornborough Archaeology Group 