Excavations in the Prehistoric Ritual Complex near Milfield, Northumberland

Abstract

The complex of sites that forms the subject of this account lies in the extreme north-east corner of England, about 10 km south-east of the river Tweed in the parishes of Kirknewton, Ewart, Akeld and Milfield, district of Berwick-upon-Tweed, county of Northumberland (fig. 1). The sites have mainly been discovered by means of air photography, but some were recorded as earthworks in the last century while two standing stones survive to this day. The modern discovery of the complex can be attributed to St Joseph during aerial surveys in the late 1940s, when a henge monument 1 km south-south-east of Milfield was located; this was subsequently included by Atkinson (1949–50, 64–5; 1951, 105–6) in his list of henges. It was recorded as a class II monument, and the presence of a pair of roughly parallel ditches (a ‘droveway’) passing through the site was noted. Further aerial survey work revealed that this site was one of several in the area around Milfield. In 1971 McCord and Jobey published further sites of henge type at West Akeld Steads, Ewart Park, East Marleyknowe and Milfield North (1971, 123–4), bringing the total of hengiform sites to five, and recording the full known extent of the ‘droveway’. The remaining sites were located by St Joseph and McCord but not published; they were noticed by the present author (among others) in the course of examination of all air photographs of the area, and appear on the plots of air photographs in the archives of the Northern Air Photography Committee, held in the Department of Archaeology, University of Newcastle upon Tyne (fig. 2).

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