Listing
Search the List

What is Listing?

Listing Guidance

Apply for Listing

Missing Pieces Project

Blue Plaque Scheme
Listing

Find out about listed buildings and other protected sites, and search the National Heritage List for England (NHLE).

Find out about listing

Terracotta tiles on the roof of Saintoft Lodge, Newton-on-Rawcliffe, Ryedale, North Yorkshire. Grade II listed © Historic England Archive DP371715
Advice
Climate Change

Heritage at Risk

Your Home

Technical Guidance

Planning

Caring for Heritage

Constructive Conservation
Advice

Our expert advice to help you care for and protect historic places.

Get our advice

A contractor cutting bricks for the wall of the partially-restored wild and natural walled garden at Warley Place, Brentwood. Explore our technical advice section © Historic England Archive DP313199
Research
Our Research Strategy and Agenda

Research Governance

Latest Research

Research Methods

Current Research

Research Results

Support & Collaboration

Inclusive Heritage

Heritage Counts
Research

Discover and use our high-quality applied research to support the protection and management of the historic environment.

Discover our research

Archaeologist Dr David Neal discussing his illustration of the mosaic being excavated at Rutland Roman Villa with members of the University of Leicester Archaeological Services team View image DP264265 © Historic England
Images & Books
Find Photos

Search All Publications

Buy Books

The Historic England Archive
Images & Books

Historic England holds an extensive range of publications and historic collections in its public archive covering the historic environment.

Browse our collections

Crowds flock around the Skylon and Dome of Discovery at the Festival of Britain South Bank Site on 12 May 1951. Both structures were dismantled at the end of the Festival in 1952. Photographer: Aerofilms Ltd, Image reference: Source: Historic England Archive EAW035702
Services & Skills
Education

Grants

Our Planning Services

Training & Skills

Archive Services

Heritage Action Zones

Levelling Up Places Service
Services & Skills

Find out about services offered by Historic England for funding, planning, education and research, as well as training and skill development.

Learn about our services

Heritage Apprentices in a training session on the Researching The Historic Environment module and training in Architectural Photography. Find out more about Heritage Apprenticeships © Historic England Archive DP347660
What's New
News

In Your Area

Historic England Blog

Latest Research

Heritage Online Debate

Statements

Stay up to Date
What's New

Read about our current news, projects and campaigns nationally and in your area.

Catch up with what's new

Two horsemen reading The Sportsman, 30 Oct 1902, Farnborough, Stratford-on-Avon, Warwickshire. Part of the Alfred Newton and Sons collection. Source Historic England Archive. BB98/02592
About Us
What We Do

Who We Are

How We Are Funded

Contact Us

Careers

Volunteer with Historic England
About Us

Historic England is the public body that helps people care for, enjoy and celebrate England's spectacular historic environment.

Find out more

Mountbatten House (formerly Gateway House), Basing View, Basingstoke, the former headquarters for the paper merchants Wiggins Teape by Arup Associates. Listed at Grade II. © Historic England
Sign in
Manage my account

Sign out

Causewayed enclosure and Anglo-Saxon cemetery 500m ENE of Heath Place

Listed on the National Heritage List for England. Search over 400,000 listed places

Overview

Heritage Category:: Scheduled Monument
List Entry Number:: 1009286
Date first listed:: 19-Mar-1974

The Missing Pieces Project

Share your view of unique places.

Add your contribution

Location

Location of this list entry and nearby places that are also listed. Use our map search to find more listed places.

This map is for quick reference purposes only and may not be to scale.

What is the National Heritage List for England?

The National Heritage List for England is a unique register of our country's most significant historic buildings and sites. The places on the list are protected by law and most are not open to the public.

The list includes:

🏠 Buildings
🏰 Scheduled monuments
🌳 Parks and gardens
⚔️ Battlefields
⚓ Shipwrecks

Find out more about listing

Historic England Archive

Search over 1 million photographs and drawings from the 1850s to the present day using our images archive.

Find Photos

Official list entry

Heritage Category:: Scheduled Monument
List Entry Number:: 1009286
Date first listed:: 19-Mar-1974
Date of most recent amendment:: 28-Jul-1994

Location

The building or site itself may lie within the boundary of more than one authority.

District:: Thurrock (Unitary Authority)
Parish:: Non Civil Parish
National Grid Reference:: TQ 65156 80532

Reasons for Designation

Between 50 and 70 causewayed enclosures are recorded nationally, mainly in southern and eastern England. They were constructed over a period of some 500 years during the middle part of the Neolithic period (c.3000-2400 BC) but also continued in use into later periods. They vary considerably in size (from 2 to 70 acres) and were apparently used for a variety of functions, including settlement, defence, and ceremonial and funerary purposes. However, all comprise a roughly circular to ovoid area bounded by one or more concentric rings of banks and ditches. The ditches, from which the monument class derives its name, were formed of a series of elongated pits punctuated by unexcavated causeways. Causewayed enclosures are amongst the earliest field monuments to survive as recognisable features in the modern landscape and are one of the few known Neolithic monument types. Due to their rarity, their wide diversity of plan, and their considerable age, all causewayed enclosures are considered to be nationally important.

The causewayed enclosure 500m ENE of Heath Place survives well beneath the plough soil. This has been confirmed from cropmark plots of aerial photographs and recent partial excavation which has left undisturbed 90% of the monument. These excavations produced much information concerning the original form and construction of the monument as well as discovering quantities of Neolithic flint tools and pottery sherds. There are only two causewayed enclosures known in Essex and so the information contained within this monument can give rare insights into the economy of the locality as well as the social and religious life of the people who occupied it. The establishment of an Iron Age settlement site here is also of great interest and indicates that the site had been adapted for a variety of uses throughout its long life. The construction of an Anglo-Saxon barrow cemetery within the inner circuit of the causewayed enclosure indicates that it was still a significant site for the local population 3,000 years after it was first constructed. This group of burials is one of only a small number of known Saxon barrow groups in East Anglia. This cemetery is particularly representative of the middle Anglo-Saxon period (7th - 8th century) and will provide rare evidence for social and burial practices at this date.

Details

The monument includes a Neolithic causewayed enclosure and an Anglo-Saxon round barrow cemetery situated on a natural platform on the Thames terraces. The land slopes gently away from the monument towards the south into the valley of a small tributary of the Thames. To the east and west it slopes into smaller dry valleys.

Although there are no visible earthworks at ground level the monument survives as buried features which have been recognised as cropmarks from aerial photographs. These include three roughly circular concentric interrupted ditches (i.e.they are not continuous but are, rather, crossed by causeways at irregular intervals), enclosing an area at least 160m in diameter. The outer two ditches are 10m apart. A palisade trench lies between the inner and middle ditches. This palisade trench has three breaks in it, coinciding with those in the outer ditches. The inner ditch is between 30m and 40m from the middle ditch and encloses an area measuring between 80m and 95m across. Other internal features such as postholes and pits can be seen within the enclosed area on aerial photographs. Also visible on aerial photographs, within the southern half of the inner circuit, are at least 5 round barrows represented by ring ditch cropmarks. These are between 8m and 13m in diameter with a circular ditch from 1m-2m wide and up to 0.35m deep.

In 1975 trial trenching and small scale excavation took place in order to verify the interpretation of the monument. Parts of the ditches and palisade slot were excavated which confirmed their Neolithic date. A continuous bank was found to have been originally constructed on the berm between the two outer ditches, the material for which was quarried from the interrupted ditches. The palisade was an additional, contemporary, defensive feature inside the middle ditch. Within the enclosed area various pits and post holes were investigated. A number of the features identified during excavation were shown to be Iron Age in date. A period of Early Iron Age settlement was followed in the Middle Iron Age by an enclosed settlement within a rectilinear ditched enclosure, which lies within the southern part of the monument. In addition, two of the five ring ditches were fully excavated and were found to represent round barrows containing Saxon inhumation burials in wooden coffins.

MAP EXTRACT The site of the monument is shown on the attached map extract. It includes a 10 metre boundary around the archaeological features, considered to be essential for the monument's support and preservation.

Legacy

The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System number:: 24868
Legacy System:: RSM

Sources

Books and journals
Hedges, J, Buckley, D, Excavations at a Neolithic Causewayed Enclosure, Orsett, Essex, (1978)
Hedges, J, Buckley, D, 'PPS 44, 1978, 219-308' in Excavations at a Neolithic Causewayed Enclosure, Orsett, Essex., (1978)
Hedges, J, Buckley, D, 'Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society' in Excavations at a Neolithic Causewayed Enclosure, Orsett, Essex., , Vol. 44, (1975), 219-308
Other
Cambridge University Collection, CUCAP 161/652 805, (1970)
CUCAP 161/652805, (1970)
CUCAP BWX99,
CUCAP K17 U 117, (1970)
Essex SMR PRN 5162,
Essex SMR PRN 5158,
NMR 6481/6/425, (1976)
NMR TQ6481/6/425, (1976)
NMR TQ6481/6/426, (1976)
NMR TQ6880/31/411,
NMR TQ6880/31/411, (1976)
NMR, NMR TQ6881/6/425-6, (1976)

Legal

This monument is scheduled under the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Areas Act 1979 as amended as it appears to the Secretary of State to be of national importance. This entry is a copy, the original is held by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.