NHER 52142 (Cropmark and Earthwork record) - An Early Iron Age ring ditch, Harford Park and Ride

August 2009. Norfolk NMP.
An Early Iron Age ring ditch, possibly relating to either a funerary enclosure or a domestic or agricultural structure was recorded through excavation and visible on aerial photographs (S1-S2) within the Harford Park and Ride development excavation area (NHER 39268) (S4-S5). The site is centred on TG 2169 0392.
The excavations examined an Early Iron Age ring ditch (3426), 6.6m in diameter, in the approximate location of these circular cropmarks. No internal features were identified and it was felt it may have originally contained funerary remains laid on the contemporary ground surface (S4). The nearby presence of another ring ditch interpreted as a Bronze Age round barrow (NHER 52137) must be noted. The correlation between the excavated ring ditch and the circular features identified on the aerial photographs is not particularly good. The aerial photographs suggest two circular features, one 7m in diameter and another up to 14m, sitting within the other. It must be assumed that the inner ring ditch visible on the aerial photographs corresponds with that excavated ring gully. Interestingly the inner ring ditch is not directly in the centre of the outer one. This could feasibly suggest that they are not contemporary, although it is worth noting that at least one of the barrows at the nearby Harford Farm cemetery (NHER 52284) was not located in the centre of the outer ring ditch.
Given the possible external enclosing ditch it is also possible that these cropmarks relate to a round house or similar structure within an enclosure, the evidence of which may have been truncated by the plough prior to excavation. Ditches assumed to relate to the late Iron Age fields (NHER 52141) would appear to overlie the outer ring ditch, although such a relationship cannot be proven from the aerial photographs. It is possible that the ring gulley relates to an agricultural or domestic structure relating to a different phase of the fields to those ditches that would appear to cut across it.
S. Horlock (NMP), 23 August 2009.